My favorite dive from our entire trip was the Caribbean reef shark feed. It was the perfect Valentine’s Day gift from my husband!
We dove with Stuart Cove’s, a dive operator known both for Bahamas shark diving and the underwater production of many major Hollywood films, such as Flipper, Jaws: The Revenge, Into the Blue, and quite a few James Bond movies.
This was the third shark feeding dive I’ve done (the first two were in Lucaya, Grand Bahama, and Beqa Lagoon, Fiji) and by far the best executed. The divers were positioned outside the deck railing of one of the local shipwrecks. The feeder, dressed in chain mail, kneeled in the center of the deck with a bait box. With a long metal spear, he would feed one shark at a time. The reef sharks behaved in as orderly a fashion as one could expect and would circle predictably around the perimeter before venturing back into the center for another shot at food.
Reef sharks are neither large nor particularly aggressive, so there was little reason to be afraid of them, even when they came super close. Regardless, they were 100% focused on the fish handout.
Shark feedings are a controversial practice, but also a lucrative one and arguably one that assists in education and conservation efforts as well. Although Stuart Cove’s performs the shark feeding every day, our feeder informed us that he only takes about a dozen fish down each day, so the sharks are probably getting less than a fish apiece.
I don’t think that this experience will ever get old to me, but I’d like to see bigger and more different kinds of sharks in the future. We saw lemon sharks and a bull shark on our Fijian shark dive last year, but that particular feeding was so chaotic that I could hardly see anything. I’ve never seen a tiger shark, so those are high on my list. Maybe next year? :)
Please check out my entire Nassau underwater photo gallery here.
Comments
10 responses to “Diving Nassau, Bahamas: Shark Diving”
[…] Lagoon in Fiji being the other two) and in my opinion the best run by far. I put up a few photos here on my blog. We also dove with Stuart Cove's for the rest of the week. We dont usually choose to […]
You can always go up to main and do a shark cage dive with the great whites!
That would be cool. They also do it on the west coast at Guadalupe Island. In Rhode Island, you can do cage diving with blue sharks, which I think would be super cool to do someday. And there are always the sand tigers in North Carolina! My list grows longer daily.
Wow. These are AMAZING! I don’t know if I’ve got the nerves to do this, but boy do your pictures make me want to give it a go. Thanks for visiting my blog! :)
Man! This is incredible! I’ve always wanted to go diving with sharks.. Maybe one day :) Thanks for visiting my blog!
Thank you! I heartily recommend it… and it’s not scary, I promise! The sharks are absolutely breathtaking.
WOW! Great pictures, they look like shots from Shark Week. There’s NO way that would be me though, sharks in the aquarium make me nervous.
[…] bait boxes go underwater with the shark feeder on Stuart Cove’s daily shark dive. Every once in a while, I saw a stray island cat that lived under the dock come out and start […]
Looks like a fun dive. I will be doing this dive at the end of October with Stuart Cove’s and am really looking forward to it. Do you have any problems taking your camera with you on the dive, I was not sure if they allowed the use of personal camera. Also, what type of camera did you use.
Gene
Hi Gene,
There were no problems at all taking personal cameras on the dive. I used a Canon s95 compact camera. It is a really fun dive. Have a great time!