Facing Giants

Prey versus predator. Size against numbers. The ultimate face-off between hunter and hunted. This all happened in the warm, shallow waters of The Bahamas. An adult tiger shark slowly swam toward a tight school of horse-eye jacks—and instead of scattering, the jacks faced the shark head-on. It was one of those rare moments you don’t expect but are always hoping for. It was near the end of a two-hour scuba dive. Conditions were perfect: no wind, no current, and a ton of sharks. Everyone in my group had already ascended, but my safety diver and I stayed down at around 45 feet on the sandy bottom, just in case something special happened. Throughout the dive, a big school of horse-eye jacks had been hovering under the boat, maybe sticking close for protection while out in the open. Tiger sharks don’t usually go after fast, healthy fish like jacks—it’s too much energy for a meal they might not catch. Sharks are opportunistic; they’d rather go for the slow, the weak, or the injured. But then one of the tiger sharks peeled off from the group and started cruising slowly right toward the school. And instead of backing off, the jacks held their formation. No gaps, no panic. It was like watching a silent standoff play out right in front of me. After two hours underwater with nothing I was really excited about, this moment came right at the end of the dive. I couldn’t believe it. That calm tension, the stillness, the face-to-face energy of it all—that’s what inspired the name of this image: “Facing Giants.”