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Several fins brushed her as they passed.

One person’s nightmare. Brianna Garofolo’s dream.

Sharks. Lots of them. Some as small as three to four feet in length. Some nine to 13 feet.

“I’d always loved sharks. It was pretty amazing,” Garofolo said of being in the South Pacific with some of its most feared residents. “Sea puppies,” she calls them, an eyebrow-raising description for anyone who has glimpsed even a snippet of a Jaws movie. 

But Garofolo isn’t a delusional kid who sees a Disney character in every wild creature’s eyes.

The 17-year-old, who began diving the summer after her freshman year, now has more than 70 dives to her credit and is rated as a master scuba diver. 

Come fall, the John Jay-Cross River swimmer and lacrosse goalie will be at the University of California-Santa Barbara, where she’ll study marine sciences and plans, in some of her downtime, to revisit the Pacific’s depths as part of a student-run scuba diving club.

“I’m more passionate about diving (than other things). I’m always happier (diving) and I’m always willing to dive,” explained Garofolo, a National Honor Society member, whose interests include music and art. She plays multiple instruments, including the clarinet, saxophone, flute and trumpet and has won awards for her high school acrylic-paint portraits.

Garofolo’s oneness with water began about age 2 when her dad, Gerard, had her swimming in the SUNY-Purchase pool. By age 5, she was competing in summer club swimming at Davenport Beach Club in New Rochelle. That led to the Saw Mill Club team out of Mount Kisco, then the Mount Kisco Boys & Girls Club Marlins team, as well as five years (two as captain) on John Jay’s girls team.

But it’s one thing to swim in pools, another to dive in oceans. 

Garofolo, who comes from a beach-loving family, always liked snorkeling. A BOCES Center for Environmental Education snorkeling trip in eighth grade to study the underwater ecosystem around Key West really fueled Garofolo’s pull toward the sea.

When her parents asked Brianna what she wanted to do during the summer after her freshman year, her response was swift: Learn to scuba dive. She’d already compiled information about an educational trip she wanted to take off the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean. 

Her dad insisted she write an essay to convince him she should go. 

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In it, Brianna talked about her love of the water and the fact she wanted to pursue marine sciences as a career. She also pointed out she’d make additional friends. As her mom, Lynn, recalls, she also mentioned something about being crazy but responsible.

The essay was effective. Garofolo spent 12 days living on a sailboat that summer in the Caribbean, learning about the environment and diving. 

“It was terrifying breathing through the air tank the first time in the water,” she said. 

But she quickly got the hang of things and went from initially diving just below the surface to 45 feet down by the end.

She’s now comfortable at depths out about 100 feet. Her explorations have taken her to shipwrecks and multiple reefs.

Her first trip to the Caribbean was followed by one to Fiji in the South Pacific before her junior year, then, last summer to Grenada in the Caribbean. 

All have been marine biology educational explorations that have involved some community service on nearby land and have garnered Garofolo various diving certifications. She is, for instance, certified in diver rescue. 

In Fiji, her two weeks of living on and diving from a sailboat included the planned encounters with sharks as part of a large research project. 

Her role was to monitor pregnant bull sharks feeding, comparing the females’ consumption to that of their male counterparts. 

She’s a bull shark defender, considering them unfairly labeled as “always aggressive and terrifying.” 

Garofolo, who has had some unplanned and uneventful shark encounters elsewhere, watched a multitude of “typically curious” sharks in a “protected shark sanctuary,”  where she and other students were in open water, not safety cages.

“I think it would really change people’s point of view if they had this encounter. … You have to get over any initial thoughts that they’re sea monsters who really attack humans. … It is completely breathtaking to see how they peacefully live in their environment,” Garofolo said. 

Garofolo, who’s also a fan of land creatures (she attended Muscoot Farm’s summer camp before becoming a year-round Muscoot junior volunteer the past several years), also enjoys the smaller things the seas hold. Among many things, that includes bioluminescent plankton she sees during night dives and her favorite fish, the small, graceful-swimming black triggerfish with neon blue stripes on fins positioned atop and below its body

They’re widely found, including off Grenada, where she lived on and dove off a sailboat for 3½ weeks. There, Garofolo explored the healthy Windward Island reefs whose colors included vibrant pinks, reds, yellows, blues and some purple. The area is plentiful with sea turtles, eels and stingrays, as well as a multitude of colorful fish.

Part of the experience there involved drift diving — dropping into a random spot in the sea and allowing the underwater current of about four knots to “take you” — something she judged as “a little dangerous but pretty cool.”

At 17, there’s plenty of time to think and rethink possible careers. Currently, Garofolo is considering everything from becoming an aquatic veterinarian — working for environmental centers, aquariums or zoos — to becoming a diving instructor.

Her bucket list contains one major thing. 

“I definitely, definitely want to see (and dive in) the Great Barrier Reef before it’s all gone,” she noted. “It has a ton of life.”

Part of the appeal wherever she goes is never knowing what she’ll see or who she’ll encounter.

“It’s incredible to be able to be underwater and breathe with creatures that can’t breathe on land,” Garofolo said.

“Scuba diving is really ethereal. It’s quite a magical experience.” 

Nancy Haggerty covers cross-country, track & field, field hockey, skiing, ice hockey, girls lacrosse and other sporting events for The Journal News/lohud. Follow her on Twitter at both @HaggertyNancy and at @LoHudHockey. Local sports coverage relies on its readers. Subscribe to The Journal News/lohud.com .

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