Maldives. Dangerous as tigers

From the book "Straight to the South", part 2 "Shark archipelago", episode 14.

Early in the morning, we are in a new place, latitudeis about 19 minutes South from the equator - we crossed it at night.

Tiny Gnaviyani atoll.

It is special, completely filled with corals from the inside, in fact it is one big island 6 km long and 3 km wide.

The soil and vegetation of the island differ from the rest of the Maldives in its fertility, there are many growing mango, papaya, bananas here. But we didn't interesting fruit, we spent the day in pursuit of tiger sharks. Yes, exactly, for the second in the list of the most dangerous to humans. Three dives were exclusively for them :)

It happened this way: we start a dive in the open ocean South of the atoll, all divers at once, 26 people including with guides. We go down to 30 meters and hang there in a circle shape and looking in different directions. And here it comes, the tiger shark..

It swim on our level, slowly makes a circle and looks around unfamiliar guests. Two or three laps – and it loses interest to us: we are large objects, proportionate to it, and even in a dense crowd, we are not like an usual food, and who knows what to expect from us, it is better for shark to get away from here:)
< br /> Each time we slightly changed a dive place, as a result we met with at least three different sharks, but the habits of all were the same, only one of them made 'vertical climb' maneuver snout upward..

Filming was problematic there: darkness and no one even tried to turn on a light: the distance to sharks was just five meters, they could scare to attack.. As a result no photos, but you can recognize something in the movie.

That's how we swam next to the most dangerous predators and remained intact :) In additional we saw at last dive a large fox shark deep into water, it presents in the movie, it is not confused with anyone because outstanding tail.

Tomorrow is the last day of the campaign. Over the past 5 days of diving we managed to see 12 species of sharks, we were able to shoot 10 of them - a wonderful result. At night we, tired and happy, were sleeping in our cabins, and the ship goes further South..