Mind: blown

This weekend I went diving on Protea Banks, a reef just off the Eastern Coast of South Africa. I did two dives on Saturday, during which we saw Zambezi (Bull) Sharks, Greater & Scalloped Hammerheads, hundreds of guitar sharks, manta rays, a giant Eagle Ray, potato bass and a shoal of barracuda. The dives were just how I like them - a swift current over a reef, large fish, 26 C temps and 20m visibility. On Sunday our weekend ended with baited drift dive where we spent 75 minutes of the 78 minute dive with two large female Tiger Sharks - the highlight of which was when the slightly smaller of the two (a minimum of 3.5m) swam towards my midriff - I ascended gently and almost half-a-ton of apex predator swam between my legs.

I mess around in quarries and enjoy a gentle fin along a shallow reef & it's great; but diving as experienced over the weekend reminds me of how awesome our sport/hobby is and how grateful I am to be able to pursue it. Every so often we go on dives like this - our personal perfect storm of good diving & I would really like to read stories from other SB members about recent dives that consitutes their perfect storms.

What an exciting dive!! Hopefully in my lifetime I'll have the chance to dive South Africa!

I'm glad you had such an enjoyable time. Those creatures are ones I have not yet seen. And I must say I hope never to. I am in the VAST minority of divers, and while I never enter the water with any fear/obsession of these things, I love to only view them on the Discovery Channel. Kudos to all you crazy folks who have the guts to actually SEEK OUT these monsters. I collect shells--these creatures will never scare the $^@! out of me.

Haha, I'm almost more afraid of touching shells than I am seeing sharks! My luck, I'll touch a shell and have an itchy red finger for 6 months, lmao! Top of my scuba bucket list is great white diving with no cage

GramsciBeat:

I would really like to read stories from other SB members about recent dives that consitutes their perfect storms. .

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I'm with you on that point... Reading others stories has encouraged me to Dive in the first place.

My most recent dive was with my 13 daughter few months ago. For me it was fairly routine dive in kelp forest. For my daughter it was only her third dive since obtaining her certification. We saw a bunch of huge lobsters under a ledge. The usual assortment of local California fish. As we made our way along a rocky ledge she points out a small cobalt blue 'slug.' It was a Spanish Shawl nudibranch and one of my personal favorite things to spot underwater. The blue body is in contrast to orange colored 'spikes' along the back. They are tiny little things no more than an inch but very striking colors and I love finding them on the reefs. She was really excited about finiding it and couldn't wait to tell her mom. The excitement of a parent watching your kid enjoy and discover scuba is my perfect storm moment.

PansSiren:

Haha, I'm almost more afraid of touching shells than I am seeing sharks! My luck, I'll touch a shell and have an itchy red finger for 6 months, lmao! Top of my scuba bucket list is great white diving with no cage

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You must dive a lot in those Caribbean "no gloves" places.

That is a dream dive for me! Would love to dive South Africa. Congrats!

I know my story was bit of a humblebrag, but the real intention is to hear what others have experienced that make them appreciate diving. Like Low says initially it was the stories I would hear that got me motivated to dive more, it was also the stories I've read on SB - among other places - that made me realise that the range of experiences that can be had using compressed gasses was way beyond anything I had ever imagined.
@Freewilly, your dive sounds awesome - I have a similarly aged daughter who absolutely refuses to go anywhere near a regulator. She will eventually and I hope to share her first dive with her too.
@PanSiren and bbarnett51, diving in South Africa is awesome; we are blessed to have some really amazing sites from tropical diving on the North Eastern Coast to temperate-to-cold on the South Western side. Shark diving ranges from raggies and reef sharks all the way through to shortfin Makos and Great Whites. If you get the timing right you could also get a chance to experience the Sardine Run, aka the Greatest Shoal on Earth. If you are not into the big stuff, there are plenty of other things to check out - including brilliant, lively reefs and some pretty nifty wrecks. Some of my nicest dives have just been pottering along a reef, checking out Nudis, frogfish and all other manner of macro-life. Just practice your backward rolls before coming out because a lot of the diving is done from RIBs (known as rubber-duckies here). The shore launches can also be quite an adventure.
Diving in SA is very conservation-orientated, so there is a lot of life on the reefs - especially in protected areas. But it also means that if hunting on scuba is your thing, whether grabbing bugs or spearing fish, it may not be the best place to go to.

For me it was one of the Dives i did in Barkley Sound in the middle of Feb.

First one was ending up nose to nose with a 7ft Sealion down at 75ft. After checking out some Ling cod egg masses down at 85ft. just swimming around then the reef we were on had tons of rock fish and they scattered in 40 different directions and I was like what the hell is my dive buddy doing behind me. I turn around to check on him and he's pointing to me and then I turn back around and there was the Sealion nose to nose with me. The the Sealion does a 90 degree turn downwards and goes under me and around the back side of the reef before i even could turn around.