"It's bad business to kill the tourists" ..... that's what I kept telling myself, over and over, on the boat ride out to our first shark feeding dive.
Before we got in the water, there was a thorough briefing of the do's and dont's for being an observer at a shark feeding.
I only really remember three things.
"Enter the water as a group". Sharks sense things thru electrical impulse and can't tell that it is a group of individual divers, they just feel that something really big has joined them. I liked the idea that the sharks thought I was the big guy.
"Keep your back tight to the chamber". Someone had sunk an old Decompression Chamber at the site. It was laying on it's side and we arranged ourselves in a line in front of it, so the sharks could not come at us from behind.
"No matter how excited you get, don't point and or wave your hands around". There are feeding fish and sharks everywhere and a waving hand looks too much like a stray piece of fish.
The guy you see in the center of this picture has a long metal cylinder with a heavy rubber seal at each end. It is filled with whole frozen fish that he takes out, one at a time and feeds to his hungry friends.
And yes.... he is wearing a "chain mail" suit. Not because the sharks want to attack him. But because in excitement to get fed, they could see just about anything as food.
The fish (there are more than just sharks here) swim in a big circle. Past him, hoping for a treat.... and then directly at us and over our heads to get set up for the next pass.
The term "feeding frenzy" totally does it justice ..... and I would go again in heartbeat.

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