Swimming with or Diving with sharks/Dolphins

[ScottD3]

Any one done a holiday for the sole reason of swimming or diving with sharks or dolphins?

Depending on what happens over the next two months, I'm tempted to get some money out of the house fund and go away with the misses for 2 weeks with main intention of diving or swimming with sharks and dolphins.
I'm searching and reading but wondering if any one has done or got any experience of such holidays?

 

[scbduke]

Quick question, are you BSAC or PADi qualified as a lot of places insist on some sort of proven qualification befote they'll take you.

I've had a couple of holidays where I've been able to dive with sharks, once in 2000 in South Africa I had a cage dive near Seal Island with White Sharks - we had a number of 12 - 15ft sharks around the cage, gets your blood pumping !!
The other time was in the Bahamas (2005 i think) diving with reef sharks (Stuart Cove ran the dive tour), great experience with 15 - 20 reef sharks circling around the bait box, chap come down dressed head to toe in chain mail and a crash helmet and you were close enough to hear the sharks ripping the bait to bits.

Both times had a really great dive, loved it.

 

[quattrojames]

Not wishing to rain on your parade at all Scott, and I've never done anything 'organised' like that, but I think that as it is (rightly so) very tightly legislated, the experience would be reduced by the beaurocracy. This would ruin it for me.

I have swum with seals in NZ and Sea Turtles in Hawaii, both chance encounters with wild creatures, and that was awesome. I'd rather watch dolphins from a boat than swim with ones that have become tame to humans.

 

[Turkster]

I took my PADI licence when i lived in Oz, had a swim with the great white sharks in the bit between Oz and Tasmania and finished off with a guy called Vic Hislop in QLD.

 

[ScottD3]

Quick question, are you BSAC or PADi qualified as a lot of places insist on some sort of proven qualification befote they'll take you.

Nope, thought about it but not done it.

Not wishing to rain on your parade at all Scott, and I've never done anything 'organised' like that, but I think that as it is (rightly so) very tightly legislated, the experience would be reduced by the beaurocracy. This would ruin it for me.

I have swum with seals in NZ and Sea Turtles in Hawaii, both chance encounters with wild creatures, and that was awesome. I'd rather watch dolphins from a boat than swim with ones that have become tame to humans.

found a couple of places in the uk that you can dive with their sharks but they want about £250 per person, just wondering if any one done it abroad in a group. You can snorkel as well, so does not have to be diving.

 

[jcs356]

I appreciate it's not swimming, but here some piccies taken from a double sea kayak of some basking sharks off the south coast of Cornwall. This was early September a few years back, friend in the front took the piccies, I was sat in the back.

There were some guys snorkelling with another group of sharks a few hundred yards away. We were quite happy to stay in the canoe Even though you know they are just eating plankton, there is some sort of primal fear about seeing such a huge fish a matter of feet away.

 

[superkarl]

i had a fight with a great white once....... it. didnt. stand. a. chance!