13 Best places to swim with sharks

While Great White Sharks have been the star attraction of Cape Town’s marine adventures for years, shark-lovers and ocean adventurers can also head into the waters south of Cape Point to free-dive, snorkel and scuba dive with the mako and blue sharks that patrol these waters.

Alongside these graceful deep-sea sharks, there is also the opportunity to spot yellowfin tuna, bonito and sunfish, as well as a range of pelagic birds including albatross, petrels and skua.

Full-day excursions depart from Simon’s Town harbour, and all equipment is provided. A valid certification is required for those wishing to scuba dive.

Like great whites and tiger sharks, bull sharks have a fearsome reputation. Getting within metres of these apex predators on a carefully controlled dive is astonishing: and in the clear, calm waters off Playa del Carmen, it’s as safe as any such encounter can be.

While bull sharks are present along the Riviera Maya all year round, dives are possible only October through March, when the more placid females enter shallower waters right off the mainland.

To dive you will need an Advanced Open Water Certification. Choose a responsible dive shop, who don’t use bait – which can be dangerous, and who follow strict distance regulations.

This famous shark diving experience sees group of divers sitting on the ocean floor, as tens, if not, hundreds of hungry Caribbean sharks circle around, gobbling up fish morsels from the bait box of the official feeder. It’s a full day trip, with two dives (the second being a ‘wall’ dive). Visibility is excellent. All year round, min 10 years.

In the waters off Cape Town it’s the Great White Shark, carcharodon carcharias, that rules the roost, and admiring this remarkable predator in its natural environment – from the safety of a sturdy steel cage, of course – is a bucket list experience you’ll never forget.

Spacious speedboats leave Kleinbaai harbour (two hours’ drive from Cape Town) in the early morning, setting course for Dyer Island and the famous ‘Shark Alley’. Here, chum (fish bait) is released into the water, the cage is lowered and adventurers don their wetsuits. When a shark comes to investigate, it’s into the water you go.

Note – you don’t have to go in the water to enjoy this trip. Watching these majestic, and curious, creatures glide around from the security of the boat is also worth going for.

Note from Matt: the great whites vanished from the area following the arrival of two orcas (that prey on the great whites) in 2000. They were spotted again at the start of 2024… but check before you book to see if they are being seen on these tours. If there are no great whites, the tour operators will often take you to dive with other types of shark – still worth doing.

Guadalupe Island, off Baja California, Mexico, teems with these infamous predators – dive operators have identified more than 75 different individuals – who come to feed on fur seals. If you’re crazy enough to share want to dive with a great white shark, this is the best place in the world to do it – sightings are virtually guaranteed, the water is a pleasant 18°C-20°C, and the excellent visibility up to 40m allows unrivalled views of those impressive teeth.

The Neptune Islands Marine Park is one of the world’s best and most accessible great white hotspots. Full-day cage diving tours depart year-round from Port Lincoln (and some include swims with sealions). In winter months, opt for 2-5 night liveaboards to allow for unpredictable weather and reduced daylight hours.

Cocos Island, in the deep Pacific, some 550km off the Costa Rican coast, is one of the top dive destinations in the Americas and together with the Galapagos one of the best destinations for marine wildlife in the Eastern Pacific.

It’s also the site of one of the great underwater spectacles – the mass schooling of hundreds of hammerhead sharks.

Each year, from June through October, they gather in uncountable numbers, attracted by high concentrations of prey. Cocos Island sits at a convergence of swirling, nutrient-rich currents, attracting vast schools of fish on which the hammerheads feed.

Whale sharks are also regular visitors to the waters around Cocos, making it a popular location for wildlife filmmakers.

Are hammerhead sharks dangerous?

Although officially tagged as a ‘man-eater’, hammerheads are shy of humans and attacks are extremely rare. They hunt on the ocean floor at night, feeding on stingrays (their favourite food), squid, mackerel, sardines and octopus.

Why do they have a strange-shaped head?

Their strange hammer-shaped head contains hundreds of small electrical sensors that they use to detect the faint electromagnetic fields generated by their prey hiding beneath the sand.

Growing up to 6m and 450kg, the hammerhead is one of the ocean’s most impressive – and iconic – sharks.

Aggressive, solitary hunters by night, by the day the sharks school in groups up to several hundred strong – a spectacular sight. The Galapagos Islands is one of the last – and best – places on earth to witness it.

One hour from Puerto Ayora, Gordon Rocks is the best one-day dive in the Galapagos (for advanced divers only) and one of the best locations to see hammerheads. Also expect to see turtles, white tips, large morays, spotted eagle rays, golden rays, stingrays and the weird and wonderful oceanic sunfish (mola mola).

Only recently discovered but readily reached from Bimini, this dive site is arguably the best place to get close to the great hammerhead shark. Accessed is limited to only a few divers each time, who sit on the ocean floor as the sharks circle. It’s a 2-hour dive, min 10 years. Full- or half-day trips available from December to April.

A 2.5-hour drive north of Sydney at Port Stephens is the Great Lakes Marine Park, a sanctuary for endangered grey nurse sharks, and one of the best places to dive with them. These fearsome-looking, but harmless 3m sharks – aka sand-tiger or ragged-tooth sharks – congregate at North Rock on Broughton Island, a dive site enclosed by large rocks and walls that’s like a natural aquarium.

Harmless thresher sharks, growing up to 5m in length, are readily identified by their large upper caudal fin. This species is found around the world, but the remote Brother Islands in Egypt are a thresher shark hotspot and one of the few places you can dive with them.

For experienced divers only, this is a live-aboard trip which also includes some excellent Red Sea diving.

A face-to-face encounter with 5m-long sharks is a thrill for even the bravest. The Aliwal Shoals, a 5km long pristine reef is one of the best, and only, places to dive with the enigmatic tiger shark – either in a cage, or without.

Bait is placed in the water and oceanic black tip sharks are quick to arrive, followed by the awe-inspiring tiger sharks. Divers enter the water in small groups of 8-10, with experienced safety divers, for up to an hour. Water visibility averages 15m, but varies from 5m to 30m depending on the prevailing weather conditions.

For the serious thrill-seeker, you can now dive with one of the most infamous man-eaters in the sea –the tiger shark.

‘Tiger Beach’, 2 hours from Old Bahama Bay, is one of the only sites in the world where you can free dive with these apex predators. Growing up to 5m long, these enigmatic sharks with a reputation for eating anything are unnervingly inquisitive, coming right up to divers, ‘bumping’ into them and biting cameras.

It has limited dive access, so the experience is wild and authentic. You’ll also see lemon and reef sharks here.