Twin Flame

I shot this photo during a trip to French Polynesia with a few friends—some of them shark divers and some scientists. We only had a three-hour window on the water before catching our boat back to Tahiti from Moorea, so we went straight out to a FAD (Fish Aggregation Device), which fishermen use offshore to attract pelagic species. These floating structures become a hub of life in the open blue, drawing in fish and, sometimes, sharks. We were over thousands of feet of deep water and had no idea if we'd even see a single shark. But within five minutes of arriving, we spotted our first Oceanic Whitetip. Then another… and eventually five of them. No bait, no chum—just us quietly floating, engines off, and these curious sharks circling us for over an hour. Oceanic Whitetips are opportunistic hunters, always investigating anything unfamiliar in their environment. In the vast blue desert of the open ocean, every encounter could mean survival—so they check everything out. Luckily for us, that curiosity didn’t turn into lunch. It was one of the most unforgettable and humbling encounters I’ve had out in the open sea. Once among the most abundant large predators in tropical seas, the Oceanic Whitetip’s numbers have plummeted due to relentless overfishing and the demand for shark fins. With their slow reproduction rates and vast oceanic ranges, they struggle to recover from these losses. Yet, in their element, they remain unchallenged—gliding effortlessly through the water. To witness an Oceanic Whitetip in the wild is to witness a relic of the ocean’s untamed past, one that we must fight to preserve.