Grey Reef Sharks Norfolk Island

I captured this image in Norfolk Island in January 2021. I went there for a short holiday purposedly for sharks diving, but also to get away from my routine in Eden, NSW. I am highly passionated about sharks and have been making some short footage and capturing images while I scuba dive and snorkeling, although not in professional way, some messages are delivered in my footage with intention of encouraging people to have more respects towards sharks by stop consuming or fishing. I believe by showing people how beautiful sharks are, it could positively change people mind-set that have been brainwashed by social media that telling sharks are a monster. At the same time, people also need to know that sharks are a territorial wild animal. If we want to dive with them, we have to dive respectfully in safe ways, by keeping distance, eyes to eyes to sharks and never dive in murky water when we can't see them. It's highly likely that sharks could attack people as a mistaken identity. Despite, sharks are intelligence and awesome animals, we also need them for healthy oceans.

From the first moment I arrived on the island, I'd been requesting to local dive operator for sharks diving where I could see them underwater. Despite, the dive operator only took me to a dive spot where there are some Galapagos sharks but from distance, I wasn't quite satisfied with that. After few days on the island, I found out that every morning or afternoon, local fishermen feed the sharks at the pier (Kingston and Cascade Pier), and there are 20-30 sharks come along.

Then, I right away requested to dive operator for sharks feeding diving at the pier. Obviously, they just said yes but never took me diving there. They asked me whether I've had dived with sharks while they feed them without being in a cage. I said, "Yes, I dived with heaps of Bull Sharks just swimming around while they fed them with tuna head and no cage".

My last couple of days on the island, after general scuba diving with them, I got off of the boat and checked around the Kingston Pier, I saw few sharks swimming just at the pier, I wasn't sure what sort of sharks was, I could only see their shadow about 3ft size. The ocean was quite swelling and it was late afternoon, so nobody wanted to dive with me. I just gathered all my gut to dived in with my camera in order to film them, however, I was staying at the safe spot where I could hold onto the stairs and kept my eyes on them while filming. They are apparently Grey Reef Sharks, they just inquisitively kept swimming towards me very closely, noticed that I wasn't their food, they swam away, then turned back again. I eventually managed to take some short footage and showed the video to dive operator there. Surprisingly, the next day, he took me for sharks feeding diving without cage at Cascade Pier.

Fishermen were cleaning their fish that they caught on the day and threw the carcass in for sharks, and we were there waiting for sharks to come to us. There were around twenty sharks (9ft size), again, they just inquisitively kept swimming towards us and just swimming away after they realized that we were not their food.

It was quite challenging experience and I was always blown away after sharks diving, no words could express how happy I was to experience this! I wish I could do that everyday, just to see my sharkies in the ocean, make me happy:)