Swimming with Sharks in the Bahamas: My Most Magical Dive Yet

It’s time to catch up with 12-year-old Mia DaPonte, New England’s youngest ever female PADI Master Scuba Diver, in her latest blog for Scubaverse!

Around this time last year, during April vacation, me and my mom went to Nassau, Bahamas. We did 10 dives with Stuart Cove’s and they were all really clear and beautiful. This was one of my first times being in clear water so I wanted to share it with you since it was pretty magical.

When we went there, I heard about the different dive spots and they were all really great. We never went to the same spot more than once, there were so many to choose from. There were some fun shipwrecks, a sunken airplane, and we saw some sharks in the beginning and a lot of stingrays and tropical fish. I really wanted to do a shark dive and feeding while we were there but we didn’t know if I was old enough. At the end of the trip we asked one of the dive masters and he told us that I could do it! The next day we were ready to board the boat for the shark dive.

I was really nervous at first to go in the water. I jumped in the water and I was looking down and saw all the sharks circling below me like a feeding in the movies. When I finally found the courage and descended, I was so happy I did it. It was magical—all of the sharks were swimming with us and thinking that we were just a normal part of the ocean. There was a photographer with us too. A tiny little baby nurse shark came up to me when I was kneeling on the bottom of the ocean. It was trying to play and sit on my lap. I couldn’t touch it because the dive master told us not to, but I really wanted to because it was so cute! I tried to move but no matter where I went it would follow. My mom has a great video of the shark trying to play with me that always makes me laugh when I see it. We swam around within the reefs for a little bit and then it was time to head up and swap tanks. We weren’t done yet—we still had one more dive. This next dive was the feeding.

Imagine sharks all around you. Wherever you turn, they are there. They would swim above us, right next to us, and behind us. We had to stay pretty still by rock markers that made up the “shark arena” that were in the sand while the dive master was doing the feeding. It was so amazing to see this. I will never forget it. There were so many sharks—they were everywhere and all kinds of sizes. The shark feeder kept food in a box and he would put it on a long stick one piece at a time and the sharks would come eat it off the stick. The dive master feeder had special training and a special metal chain barrier suit that he wore over his wetsuit. I asked him after the feeding if he had ever gotten bit and he said he hadn’t.

After the sharks had their lunch and there was no more food, they swam away and we got to go try to find and collect any teeth they lost during the feeding. I found one tooth that had fallen out of a shark’s mouth. This tooth is really special to me because it wasn’t bought from a shop but I got it and saw it being collected with my own eyes.

This trip was really fun to do. It was just me and my mom living the dream with sharks swimming all around us.

To find out more about Shark Diving in the Bahamas, visit stuartcove.com/shark-diving.