She never feels like she is in over her head, even when schools of barracuda sweep toward her or when sharks lunge at her in waters as deep as 150 feet.
Scuba-diving socialite Niki Dantine has spent most of her life navigating a sea of actors, lawyers and business bigwigs, after all.
"I've been swimming with the sharks on Rodeo Drive since I was 18," Dantine says with a grin. "The sharks in the water have been given a bum rap, really."
Nonetheless, jaws dropped in mansions and ballrooms around Beverly Hills when the society matron traded her gowns and gloves for a wetsuit and aqualung and headed for the high seas.
Dantine, for decades a fixture on the Westside charity party circuit, had suddenly decided to take up deep-sea diving in such faraway places as the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.
Her friends figured they must have misunderstood. They could visualize Dantine relaxing on the upper deck of a luxury cruise ship. But the thought of her plodding around a bare-bones dive boat in rubber flippers, lugging 100 pounds of air tanks and breathing regulator gear, was unfathomable.
"Their idea of a dive boat was something like the Queen Elizabeth 2. But it's not. It's pretty rough and basically uncomfortable," said Dantine, a slightly built redhead. "Look at me: I'm older than most people diving. The oldest people on boats with me are the guys 50 or 52. I don't tell them how much older I am."
The grandmother of 10, Dantine will admit only to being in her 60s. But after a decade of diving she has emerged from the water with proof that she hasn't been spending her free time lounging in a deck chair.
While perfecting her diving technique, she taught herself underwater photography. And now a Beverly Hills art gallery is displaying 34 blowup prints of her most eye-catching pictures in an exhibit that runs through April 13.
"These are gorgeous, mysterious photographs of nature's beauty that is hidden from us," said Yoram Gil, owner of Galerie Yoramgil in Beverly Hills. "She doesn't think of herself as such, but she's an artist."
Friends of Dantine flocked to a pair of exhibition-opening receptions last monh.
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Everyone there had their eyes coming out of their heads. They were incredulous at what they were seeing," said Jill Cartter, a longtime friend. "There wasn't anyone there who wasn't totally amazed."
