For the next six weeks we are handing our marine life series over to renowned photographer and journalist, Stefan Beskow.
Stefan has travelled the world, and dived just about every corner of it, during over 30 years in the industry. Having chosen Emperor Divers to do much of his underwater work, we asked him to take us through some of his favourite experiences.
Fittingly, as we bring an end to our Shark Month features, he starts off with the oceanic whitetip and a memorable encounter from our old favourite Emperor Echo…
We had some amazing encounters with the oceanic whitetip shark during the ‘Red Sea Sharks’ tour on Emperor Echo in 2022.
It was a trip aimed at meeting as many sharks as possible – and we came up with six species!
We saw hammerhead, grey reef, whitetip reef, whaleshark, threshers and, last but not least, the oceanic white tip.
We saw oceanics both at Daedalus and Elphinstone. But the best encounters were at Elphinstone where we had several sharks circling us and even swimming into us. It was amazing!
The oceanic is one of the slightly larger sharks that you may see as a diver and should be treated with respect. Unlike many sharks, it is curious and will gladly come up to inspect you and even ‘bump’ you!
What it actually does is to rub its sensory organs (Lorencino’s ampoules) to check if you are of any interest. You have to remember to act calm and controlled if you dive with them, no quick movements, and that makes it an absolutely fantastic experience.
They can be up to 3m but most that you as a diver see are around 1.5m to 2m. It is pelagic and is therefore mainly seen at offshore reefs such as Brothers, Elphinstone and Daedalus where there is deep water all around.
If you want to find out more about how you can be enthralled by a Red Sea shark experience like Stefan was, have a look at our Egypt itineraries – especially the Daedalus, Fury & Elphinstone one he enjoyed so much.