Artsology

Encountering a shark while diving near West Caicos

from the Artsology series The Arts Adventurer

I'm relatively new to scuba diving, as I was certified a few years ago and have dived a total of 16 times to date. I've seen a lot of beautiful and amazing things underwater during those dives, but had never encountered a shark until dives #15 and #16, both near West Caicos. We went out with Dive Provo, and on this particular dive, they took us out to an area called the "Magic Mushroom," where we saw this shark swim by.

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encountering a shark while scuba diving in Turks and Caicos

It's a little difficult to determine the size of this shark, as the picture above and the video below are visually deceiving in regards to how close we really were to it. At the point in the video where it swam under my son's moving flippers, he was about 20 feet above it, so the angle and the actual distance throws the scale off. I'd guess it was about 5-6 feet long, and you can get a better sense of that scale in the photo next to the video, where the shark and the diver are about the same level.

As close as we were, the shark wasn’t too interested in any of us. But it was still a thrill to see and be diving near a shark for the first time!

seeing a shark while scuba diving near West Caicos