When people find out that we are scuba divers, often one their first questions is “Do you ever see anything dangerous?” You can sense that they are expecting you to come out with some scary shark story, but we just tell them the most dangerous thing you can encounter scuba diving is the ocean itself.
So what made us fall in love with sharks?
It was our first encounter with a hammerhead shark while diving Stingray City in the Cayman Islands. Having just run out of squid pieces that had been provided for feeding the stingrays, we became aware of another group of divers who were madly tapping their air cylinders. Having worked out where the tapping was coming from we noticed the unmistakable shape of a hammerhead shark emerging from their direction and swimming towards us. Our first reaction was fear, after all this fish was about 7 to 8 feet in length and swimming straight at us, but suddenly it veered away, and with a flick of it's tail it was off. You could sense that actually, it was as worried about us, as we were about it. Fear receded and was replaced by awe and respect, and back on dry land decided that if we were going to meet sharks we ought to find out more about them, and how to react around them. The more we learnt, the more we came to appreciate these much maligned and misunderstood creatures. Since that holiday we have visited many different locations for diving, and most of them are picked especially to give us a good chance of seeing sharks.
Maldives
For us the Maldives is the best place for a diving holiday. Shark encounters here are frequent, but there is also a wealth of marine creatures to keep anyone happy, including several varieties of the sharks cousins in the ray family. Shark life varies from atoll to atoll, but the commoner species are White Tip Reef Sharks, Gray Reef Sharks, Black Tip Reef Sharks and Indian Ocean Nurse Sharks. At certaintimes of the year, if you are lucky and in the right place you may be lucky enough to see a Whale shark. We have been very fortunate and seen whale sharks on 5 occasions. One young shark was so inquisitive that it swam right up to Denise’s face and looked at her from a distance of less than 2 feet. Our golden rule in diving is never to touch anything, but on this occasion Denise could not resist gently running her hand down its side as it swam past. After all, the shark came up to her!On another occasion we were privileged enough to spend 40 minutes with 2 or 3 whale sharks that were feeding on a bloom of plankton. We only had sight of 2 at any one time, but every now and then a shark moved out of our range of visibility to return a few minutes later. The Dhoni boat crew told us that they were able to see 3 sharks, so it may not be the same one that returned. There were also around 16 mantas somersaulting alongside. We felt quite rude almost ignoring this spectacle, but the closeness of the 2 whale sharks taking huge gulps of plankton filled water was just too awesome to look away. Other sightings have been Zebra Sharks (sometimes locally called Leopard Sharks), and Silvertip Sharks. Some friends of ours were also lucky enough to see a Tiger Shark in the Maldives. For Louise it was her first shark. Not bad for starters!
Bahamas
For really close encounters with sharks you cannot go far wrong with the Bahamas. We have visited New Providence and Walkers Cay where shark feeding is done almost on a daily basis. Shark feeding is a slightly controversial practice, but we have tried to follow guidelines from the British shark conservation charity The Shark Trust about shark feed diving. Our personal view is that if the feed is properly organised and meets the criteria of The Shark Trust, it can be a very useful platform for shark awareness. We have witnessed many a nervous diver apprehensively descending into a mass of reef sharks, only to later emerge so excited and enthusiastic about how amazingly beautiful they are. The thought that these people will fly home and tell their friends that sharks are not the evil creatures of nightmares and horror films leaves you with the hope that the image of sharks can only benefit from these encounters.Stuart Coves on New Providence Island conduct their shark feeds at a spot several miles away from the island. The fish scraps are offered from a spear by the dive instructor who is situated within the circle of divers who are kneeling on the seabed. The sharks that we saw there tended to be mainly female Caribbean Reef Sharks. Throughout the feed they remained very relaxed and showed no signs of feeding frenzy. They swam in and out of the circle, coming so close that you often got brushed by their pectoral fins and occasionally also got a gentle slap in the face from their tail. Sadly we heard recently that the Island of Walkers Cay was devastated by a hurricane in October 04 that had left it in ruins. We believe it is currently up for sale and hope that maybe somebody will buy it that will put the conservation of the local sharks as a priority. When we stayed there the shark feeds were conducted by anchoring a frozen ball of fish leftovers in mid-water. The divers were asked to remain at a safe distance from the frozen chumsicle, until the dive master had firmly attached it to the chain. Once he was satisfied that all was ok he beckoned the divers forward, where you were free to swim around with the circling sharks. Once again the sharks were very relaxed and appeared to regard us as just another big creature there for the feed. The sharks were mainly Caribbean Reef or Black Tips when we visited, but apparently Nurse sharks and Bull or even Tiger sharks occasionally turned up. On days when the sharks were not fed we still requestedto visit the feeding site (all the divers during our visit were interested in the sharks only). The sharks would still be there cruising around and you felt like you were having a slightly more natural encounter, although in reality in most places sharks would probably not be so comfortable in such close proximity of humans. The sharks were curious and would swim within about a meter of the divers allowing good photographic opportunities. Another of the attractions of Walkers Cay was the Bull sharks that lived very close to the island. At the end of one of the runways the Bull Sharks would congregate in very shallow water, giving great viewing from dry land. We just hope that these waters have not been plundered whilst the eyes of the scuba diving world have been away!
Caribbean
We have lumped our visits to the various Caribbean islands under one heading, mainly because the shark encounters for us have been limited. As previously mentioned we have the Cayman Islands to thank for our love of sharks, following the sighting of the Hammerhead, but in general our only other sightings have been Nurse Sharks. In Grenada there was one site where baby Nurse Sharks seemed to be sheltering under every piece of coral that they could get under, but we did not see any large specimens during our stay. In Antigua however we did see some very large Nurse Sharks. They tended to be under overhangs, but we would estimate their lengths on average to be around 8 or 9 feet.
Endangered
There were only 63 attacks worldwide by sharks in 2002 and only 3 attacks were fatal. This sounds like 3 too many but just compare the following list of average estimated deaths per year for other causes:
* Shark Attack – 6
* Falling Coconuts - 150
* Elephants - 300
* Car Accident – 17,000
* Accidental Drowning in bath tub – 350
* Accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed – 500
* Sharks killed by man each year – 100,000,000
With around 100 million sharks being killed by humans each year, purely for their fins, we feel passionate about this barbaric practice being stopped. Shark numbers worldwide are slumping and we could already be too late for some shark species. We are also increasingly upset at the way that the media report on shark related incidents because they feel these stories will make a good headline. Unfortunately people do occasionally get bitten, probably as the consequence of a mistaken identity or maybe out of pure curiosity, and most sadly die of blood loss. However every incident seems to be reported as a savage attack by a man-eating shark. Many creatures on this planet are responsible for human deaths, and in fact you are more likely to die in a road accident on the way to the coast than you are to even get a sighting of a shark. In truth more people are killed by falling coconuts on paradise beaches than by the sharks that swim just metres away in the ocean. Sharks hold an important place in our seas, and the sooner they are protected the better for everyone. The oceans without sharks will be a sorry place indeed.
If like us you are passionate about the practice of shark finning being outlawed, please visit the Shark Trust website and sign their online petition
It was our first encounter with a hammerhead shark while diving Stingray City in the 
For us the 
For really close encounters with sharks you cannot go far wrong with the Bahamas. We have visited New Providence and Walkers Cay where shark feeding is done almost on a daily basis. Shark feeding is a slightly controversial practice, but we have tried to follow guidelines from the British shark conservation charity The Shark Trust about shark feed diving. Our personal view is that if the feed is properly organised and meets the criteria of d2.jpg)
We have lumped our visits to the various Caribbean islands under one heading, mainly because the shark encounters for us have been limited. As previously mentioned we have the Cayman Islands to thank for our love of sharks, following the sighting of the Hammerhead, but in general our only other sightings have been Nurse Sharks. In Grenada there was one site where baby Nurse Sharks seemed to be sheltering under every piece of coral that they could get under, but we did not see any large specimens during our stay. In Antigua however we did see some very large Nurse Sharks. They tended to be under overhangs, but we would estimate their lengths on average to be around 8 or 9 feet.