Horror as Diver Realizes Sharks Circling, and ‘More Coming From the Deep’

A terrifying moment captured on film of a group of divers coming face-to-face with sharks during a safety stop left viewers speechless.

A scuba instructor known on Instagram as @underwater_hadrien was with a group of divers in the Maldives. Preparing to leave the depths of the water, the group conducted a safety stop. This standard dive procedure occurs for any dive below 32 feet, according to an article from Dive Buddies 4 Life. It is a brief stop on the way out of the water that allows a diver’s body to decompress and release excess nitrogen bubbles after time in deep waters.

In the February 5 Instagram video, the divers floated around to let their bodies adjust during the three- to five-minute stop. They were about to reach the surface when tiger sharks started circling the group. The sharks swam around the divers, coming from every direction.

The instructor wrote in the video there were nine young male sharks. These sharks continued getting closer as they were “curious” and wanted to check on the divers. Slight panic settled in. The divers had nowhere to turn, with “more coming from the deep blue.”

The caption reads: “The best (scariest) safety stop ever!”

The video showed how close the sharks came to the divers. You could see the stripes on the shark’s body. These vertical stripes are dark as juveniles, but as they age, they are harder to spot, an article from Ocean Conservancy reported.

The article said that these predators are known to be aggressive and are second to great whites in the number of attacks on humans. But people pose a bigger threat to tiger sharks due to the heavy harvesting of fins, skin and livers. This led to the animals being classified as “near threatened.”

Newsweek reached out to @underwater_hadrien via Instagram for additional comment.

With over 2.4 million views on Instagram, viewers flooded the comment section with opposing opinions on this experience.

Several people thought the safety stop was incredible and “a lifetime experience.” They called it “wild.” But others had seen enough: “I’ve never dived before but I’d be crapping myself seeing all those sharks.”

One curious viewer asked: “So how did it end? They left I guess .. but after how long and how?” The instructor responded: “They were turning around us until the last second before we came back to the boat!”

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