I was really look­ing for­ward to see­ing some ham­mer­head sharks dur­ing my time on the Mal­dives. But even though I man­aged to always avoid these sharks I did get to see loads of other types of sharks, most not­ably the black­tip reef shark.

For more than ten minutes my buddy and I were sur­roun­ded by a group of maybe 8–10 black­tips. Because of this group we got ourselves into trouble with the dive crew for over­stay­ing our dive time by around 20 minutes. But it was worth it and I’d do the same thing again…

A note from the editor: Some facts about black­tip reef sharks

• The black­tip reef shark (or carchar­hinus melan­op­terus) is a spe­cies of requiem shark from the fam­ily carcharhinidae.
• The max­imum size is around 1.6m.
• They prefer shal­low water and are usu­ally not to be found past 30m.
• This spe­cies has been clas­si­fied as near threatened, which means that it might be con­sidered threatened with extinc­tion in the near future.
• These sharks are vivi­par­ous, mean­ing the female give live births.
• Although a timid spe­cies, its coastal hab­itat brings it in close con­tact with humans which, very rarely, can res­ult in an acci­dent. Waders are most at risk when their legs are mis­taken for nat­ural prey and acci­dent­ally bit­ten. Swim­ming instead of wad­ing greatly reduces that risk.