DIVE LOG AUSTRALASIA FEB 2025 ISSUE 410

That one I’d done before, but there was a lot to see that I hadn’t. There is a bit of an unusual shark feed here. Unusual in the way that it is done. A fishing boat comes out to a place on the reef where a small valley runs from the shallows down the wall to the drop-off. The fishermen drop burley into the valley and us divers drop in about 200m further up the wall and drift down to this location at about the 20m mark, where the wall is fairly vertical. Divers are asked to stick to the wall closely, as the sharks swim up and down the valley snacking on the tasty morsels there. As we passed the fishing boat, they called out to our boat crew that they already had two tiger sharks, and they were right. Once settled into

spot, the tigers were right in front of us cruising up and down the valley, making the other sharks seem tiny in comparison. A couple of times they cruised out into the blue and came into the row of divers on the wall, causing a heart palpitation or two! At about four metres long each that’s probably a fair thing! A third smaller tiger came in for a look as the action was dissipating, far too late for a feed, but at about two and a half metres the patterning on his side was far more pronounced. There were lots of other sharks around, grey reef, white-tip and an occasional silvertip, but it was the tigers that held our attention. www.kenhoppenphotography.com.au

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DiveLogAustralasia #410 February 25