Shark Dives Aliwal Shoal

---

---

A divetrip to Umkomaas near Durban. 3 days of beautiful diving over christmas 2011 (Dec 23rd-25th 2011). I found some more great dive buddies and dive guides in Walter, Jilles and Barbara. Had absolutely amazing days above and under water! Thanks guys!

Come with me! Join me for a dive into diving with sharks at Aliwal Shoal. The sharks we encountered down there were mostly oceanic blacktips, wonderful elegant and majestic creatures. Enjoy!

I had three days of diving with Barbara, Walter and Jilles, three great reef dives at Aliwal Shoal (I will try to make another blog soon). On two of them we saw the raggedtooth sharks, and I had three great shark dives. We saw between twenty and maybe more then fifty oceanic blacktip sharks. On two of the dives there were tigersharks around, but did not come closer. The blacktips were exclusively females, no males in sight. Maybe somewhere else in the vicinity, because one of the females had bitemarks. The blacktips are beautiful creatures, swimming around us, restless, elegant swimmers. And not really interested in divers. Only interested in the bait fish, not at all in human divers...

---

Photos

Sharkdiving Aliwal Shoal
Oceanic Blacktip Sharks 23712/2011

Mating is tough
Poor lady, this really looks like she mixed with a bad guy... but thats shark's life, the males bite the pectoral fins of the females

Cheeky
Cheeky, a female Oceanic Blacktip Shark 23/12/2011

Briefing: DONT!
"Don't get buoyant like an angel, the sharks might like your flapping hands..." Jilles and Walter explain the business.

Briefing: DO
"Better: keep hands close to the body" Jilles shows it while Walter is still making fun... having fun is part of the job...:-)

A sharks face
Sharkdive on Christmas eve

Cheeky again
Another pic of cheeky swimming around us

Oceanic Blacktip
Close encounter, but they do not run into you, it more feels like they are extremely careful and never bump into you or into each other

Oceanic Blacktip
beautiful encounter in the open water

Close-up: Nose
Close-up of the nose. the grooves and pits of the sensory cells and ampullae lorenzini

crossing paths
two oceanic blacktips, quite a good picture of these two beauties

Close-up
Close-up

Raggies!
Raggedtooth Sharks on christmas eve, Aliwal Shoal, the Chunnel!

Raggedtooth Sharks
Raggies on christmas eve, Aliwal shoal

Raggies in the chunnel
Dec 24th, divesite: the Chunnel

Raggie near the pinnacles
Divesite: Pinnacles, Aliwal Shoal, Dec 25th 2011

Already there
theres already quite a few around down there, cruising around and hoping for prey. Dec 25th 2011

Shark flying around us
looks like this shark is flying around us

The shadow of the remora
The shadow of the remora on her body

quite a few!
at least 20 blacktip sharks on this image! Even if it looks like chaos and hectic it did not feel like it. They always tried to avoid divers, the baitbal or bumping into each other. A bite seems to be carefully decided, if all his senses tell him to go, but also on opportunity. As a diver, do not give him opportunities.

quite a few sharks around the baitball
Again more than 20 sharks on one picture. The one in the center left above the ball has a badly broken jaw from a fishhook

Comments

[Chris and Nikki]

Awesome picture.