After a comprehensive briefing, you descend to the bottom where you immediately see sharks swimming all around you. Then, in one group, you move to the actual feeding location. All the way, sharks swim alongside you as well as crossing your path. Kevin directs you to lie about 1.5 metres from the feeding site in between two small bommies. Sharks continue to circle the site, with more and more appearing every second. Kevin then attaches a large number of fish heads to a rope tied to a buoy while his back is guarded by his wife Mayumi (thank heavens they get on) or one of his divemasters. Sharks include grey whalers and white and black tipped reef sharks.

As soon as the bag containing the fish is removed, the whole area comes alive. Many more sharks seem to appear from nowhere to join those seen earlier. They rip straight into the fish, creating the classical feeding frenzy, each shark arching its back and pulling its pectoral fins in close to its body. Soon it is over and Kevin sets up the fish for another go.

During the first feed on my most recent trip to Vanuatu, one shark actually hit my hand and video camera as it battled for a share of the available food. The footage I shot is quite spectacular and the shark can be clearly be seen hitting the camera. While the sharks are fighting for the food, you can see other members of the dive group watching on in awe. The second feed was just as exciting, with one shark becoming entangled somehow in the fish heads. After a dramatic fight, it suddenly went still. Despite prodding from the two divemasters (using two long wooden poles), the shark did not move, causing me to think (you can hear me say it on the video tape) “it’s had a heart attack”. I was wrong. Eventually the shark came back to life after its trick of playing “possum”.

This is definitely one of the most exciting dives you will ever do, in fact, probably the second most exciting thing you will ever get to do (I leave the other to your imagination). Without exception, everyone I have spoken who has done the shark dive has praised it as one of their top dives. I have done shark feeds in other locations around the Pacific but this is definitely the best. A must do dive, even if you have done other shark feeds.

This shark feed was only run by Kevin Green’s Aquamarine Diving, Santo.