Center Stage

Seconds after I took this photo, I had to check the viewfinder to see if what I thought happened actually happened. I was still about 40 feet underwater, surrounded by around 13 Oceanic Whitetip sharks, I probably should have been looking around more but I couldn't wait to get on the boat to check if I finally captured my sought after shot of these sharks. As I zoomed in on the image, I started smiling, realizing that out of the entire sequence, I had finally captured one frame where none of the shark fins were overlapping. I find Oceanic whitetips, and diving with them, to be on the higher end of danger, mainly because they live in the pelagic zone, out in the deep blue, where they can approach you from any direction, from thousands of feet below. In conditions like this, it becomes even more challenging. When there are multiple Oceanic whitetips around, some reaching 8 to 9 feet long, and you don’t know when they last fed, their behavior can change quickly. A lot of the time, I’m shooting almost blindly, not even looking through the viewfinder, just to keep my head on a swivel and track any shark that might be coming in from behind.