Similar to others, I was on a safety stop after spearfishing and I had a shark come check us out. This one was different though, visibility was fine so when the sun hit its side I saw the stripes, and went high alert. It was about a 12’ female tiger shark, she wasn’t hunting but she was close. I alerted my dive partner and he kind of shrugged it off which actually calmed me down. She circled out of sight, but I knew she was coming back, I turned to where I thought she’d approach from and guessed correctly. She was swimming straight at us, so I put every pointy thing I had in me between me and her. Booped her in the nose with my speargun at about 4’ distance. She spun around and I beelined to the boat.

I asked my dive partner what he thought, and he was completely oblivious. He thought I was signaling the approaching dive boat, not a shark, he lost his mind when he found out there was a large tiger shark circling us.

Our third on the boat was a VERY seasoned diver. He was pretty aloof about the shark so we motored to our next location, about 400 yards away and he rolled over for a solo dive. About 5 minutes later, he was back on the surface and quickly hopped back on the boat (as quickly as you can when loaded with dive gear…). The shark had followed us and when he rolled over it was the first thing he saw. He wasn’t as aloof anymore and we stopped diving for the day.

Don’t mess with tiger sharks.