What am I supposed to react when a shark is heading towards me?

[chillyinCanada]

I can confirm that Captain Dustin McCabe stated this before one of our wreck dives in particular. He told us don't drop all the way to the sand or you're going to scare the sharks away, and in fact this is what I was thinking when I posted earlier about all the big stuff taking off when they see divers, plus other experiences on dives when I've seen glmpses of big stuff as it takes off when I first begin a dive.

Sure, that happens too but not everywhere, not all the time.

 

[caruso]

Sure, that happens too but not everywhere, not all the time.

Right. When we did the West Palm wreck treks the goliath groupers kept their distance and were moving parallel or away from me almost always. On the Castor a few days later they weren't the least bit bothered and swam towards and around us.

As far as sharks goes, other than a feeding dive most of my experiences have been that they make a brief appearance, maybe circle around once, and disappear. But in Belize, there were a few that swam around us for most of the dive. One guy I followed on the Aggressor supplied scooter for a while until he suddenly turned right around and took a hard look at me as if to say "What can I do for you buddy?!"

 

[Dan]

If you dive in Cocos' hammerhead cleaning stations like in Manuelita dive sites, they will come over and let barberfish clean them. All you need to do is just park your rear on a rock and enjoy the show, as I posted in the earlier video in post #19, page 2.

 

[chillyinCanada]

It should be noted that the OP is in Mauritius.

 

[seeker242]

How do you observe reef sharks without bait? They will just swim off. I merely asked why you suggest not going on a feeding dive, cause if you really want to see sharks, thats what your gonna have to do.

Otherwise you just see them in passing, they are on their way out because you are down there.

Depends where you go. In places like the Bahamas, you could have 20 of them circling around you for the whole dive, on non-feeding dives. And they will come right up to you.

 

[The Chairman]

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[Neilwood]

I am sure there are species that will hang about just because they can and others where they will come and go.

My (limited) experience of oceanic whitetips (Carcharhinus longimanus) is that they are quite happy just swimming around you as you hang - buddy and I came back to the boat to do our stop and get on board the boat when three OWT started swimming round in the vicinity of the boat. They were easily there for another 10 minutes just casually swimming round us (as well as the other 10 divers from our boat)- this was without any feeding going on.

 

[chillyinCanada]

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Great video!

 

[The Chairman]

Great video!

I love sharks. I think I saw a thousand sharks on just one dive. Simply awesome. Not a big fan of feeding dives, but I'll be doing one in Fiji in the coming weeks.

 

[Steelyeyes]

I love sharks. I think I saw a thousand sharks on just one dive. Simply awesome. Not a big fan of feeding dives, but I'll be doing one in Fiji in the coming weeks.

Of all of the feeding dives I've looked into the one in Fiji is the only one I'd be interested in going on. I think they hit the fine line on how to treat them just right.