I had an unsettling encounter with a White Tip Reef shark while Ocean Swimming in the lagoon at Matuku Island recently on our Fiji trip.
We had been dropped off in deep water by the zodiacs for our swim, I knew there was shallow reef very nearby so I swam over to it, and got into trouble from the zodiac driver but that’s another story.
I started happily swimming up and down alongside the reef, on my third ‘length’ I saw a white tip, about 1.5m long, swim rapidly up along the reef from behind me, it came quickly with very rapid movements as if it was angrily looking for something, like breakfast mebbe, it swam ahead of me on my right then circles around me and again came up behind on my right, but this time it swam rapidly towards me! Yikes! I hadn’t felt uncomfortable until this point but now I was suddenly a bit uneasy. I stopped swimming and ‘stood up’ in the water looking directly at Mr White Tip. This seemed to make it change it’s mind and it turned on a dime and swam off - phew. I think I really was on the menu.
We saw another similar white tip later on in the morning while diving and it also appeared agitated. I wonder if it was a full moon?
