Epic Round The World Trip Adventures! Stunning Photos & Articles - A fascinating gap year travel journal covering every stop of their journey.

Moorea Shark Feeding - French Polynesia
Gap Year Travel Journal

(7th June) Mo'orea - Boat Trip / Shark Feeding
Wow, what a day of thrills this boat trip was! Departing from the jetty at our hotel, we first stopped out in the lagoon for the shark feeding show. As we anchored, the sharks were already swimming around the boat, but what we didn’t realize is that you can actually get into the sea and watch all the action from under the water too! Jo was too spooked by her previous shark encounters and decided that this wasn’t for her – the sharks are scary enough on their own without dead fish and blood being thrown into the water with you too! Mike of course was well up for this and was first in the water. Everyone holds onto a line of rope and floats while watching the sharks being fed right in front of them. There must have been about 30 black tips out there and it was a real feeding frenzy – scary enough to witness from the boat but even more thrilling for Mike to see first hand from underwater. The sharks were all around Mike, under, behind and in front of him, sometimes the sharks swam directly at him and he had to push them away! A cameraman was down there filming it all and we purchased the DVD of our trip – it has some incredible footage of the sharks fighting for the meat and ripping it apart. If Mike had been buzzing from his shark encounters from the previous days, after this one, he was off the scale with the thrill of it all – a once in a lifetime experience that he’ll never forget. Next the boat stopped alongside the Dolphin Encounter enclosure built out in to the sea, where the staff got a captive dolphin to perform some jumps and spins for us. Farther on round the coast we stopped and anchored up again, but this time to feed the stingrays. Our skipper Bruno stood in the waist high water with a handful of raw fish and he was soon completely surrounded by stingrays, virtually climbing up his body to get fed. Everybody stood in the water and had the rays swimming all around them – Mike had one come up and climb up him too. Bruno even held a piece of meat in front of the ray’s head and then hung onto it as it took him for a ride. We thought that was incredibly brave knowing that these were the same type of ray that had killed Steve Irwin but apparently the rays need severe provocation before they sting as a last resort. Oh, and while the rays were being fed, about 20 sharks were circling the area looking for any stray scraps! The boat then headed off to a motu (island) where we moored up for a beach barbecue. We spent the whole afternoon here: snorkeling off the beach and stroking the rays that came into the shallows. The men had a coconut shelling competition and we’re proud to say that Mike secured a British victory over his Italian opponent in style!

See how close Mike was to the sharks!
Click thumbnails 1 - 3 at the bottom to enlarge.

Photos 1 & 2. You can see sharks swimming directly below him on two of the photos! Apologies for the dodgy finger print on them - Jo was too scared by sharks to think about positioning of hands!

Photo 3. In another photo the black blobs swimming in front of Mike while he's holding on to the anchor rope and also in one of the scenery shots are about 30 hungry sharks.

Photo 8. The creatures in the pic with a crowd stood in the water are killer stingrays, one is trying to give Mike a kiss!