Shark Diving in O’ahu
What an experience. Honestly the best I’ve had in my whole life. This was one of those days that I think I’ll remember for the rest of my life. My friend & I went with @deepblueecotours (ig) and it was the best experience ever. The day started a little stressful trying to find out where it was with minimal service, but once we got there we hopped on the boat and met our amazing tour guide. ]
For the life of me I can’t remember his name but he was really cool. I am a really weak swimmer and this guy was so inspiring I wanted to drop everything and dedicate my life to becoming a professional shark diver.
Anyway, we went about 30 minutes into the ocean as we got some information on what we’d be doing and how the dive was going to go! Once we got to where we were stopping, our guide threw a yellow hydro flask into the ocean to attract the sharks. He told us not to splash and to enter the water as gracefully as possible. It was a little nerve wracking to see the sharks but honestly very exciting. I slid into the water and instantly panicked. I think my guide thought I was panicking about the sharks but I guess it was more that I didn’t realize just how bad of a swimmer I really am. The photographer came over and calmed me down as I came to realize I could very easily float. Definitely 10/10 embarrassing, but they were so so nice about it!
Our guide was diving really deep down and blowing bubbles through his mask it was very impressive. I was just focused on keeping myself alive and not drowning. The sharks were coming really close and it was amazing to see- almost like an out of body experience. I wasn’t scared of the sharks at all (scared of the water more than them!)
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The guide had to help me again when my mask came off and he basically held me up while I fixed it.. definitely another embarrassing moment but this day was so surreal it didn’t even matter. Also the guides said they’d seen was worse freak outs and it could’ve been worse, I mean my bikini or something could’ve fallen off at least it was just my mask!
They called me over to talk some photos and then it was time to go. The whole boat ride back I couldn’t stop thinking about how amazing the last two hours had been- I can’t recommend this enough. The guides were great and the pictures were amazing. You could tell these people are really passionate about what they do, they really wanted to leave us with a good impression of sharks & help spread the word that sharks are not as scary and dangerous as they are portrayed.
Some Things about Sharks
Sharks are typically finned alive, meaning they feel all the pain of it and then are usually just thrown back in the ocean to bleed to death, get eaten, or starve.
Several million sharks are finned per year, even more are outright killed (all by humans)-it’s actually a billion dollar industry
Even though shark finning is technically banned in the US, there are loopholes to get around it
The massive number of sharks that are killed isn’t just damaging to the shark population, it’s damaging to the entire ocean ecosystem
