Dad-daughter duo swims with sharks for diving landmarks
Dubai-based Indian expat dives seven times in Maldives with 12-year-old daughter for his 50th dive and her 25th
As if diving in the open water is not challenging enough, this Dubaibased father-daughter duo sought specific spots where they can swim with a shiver of sharks in the Maldives.
For Indian expat Priyadarshee and his 12-year-old daughter Tisya Panigrahi, diving is not only an adventure but also family time. Their latest Maldives escapade wasn't the first: It's Priyadarshee 50th dive and Tisya's 25th.
Tisya won't ever forget her experience in the waters off the island of Alimatha, where she swam with nurse sharks that were seven to eight feet long — or double her height.
"This, I thought, was really cool. But my father and I actually descended further down, even much below where these nurse sharks were swimming. We went down up to 70 feet. The sharks came close to us expecting we'd give them food (which is a common practice). They started nudging me, but I wasn't scared because they are quite gentle," she told Khaleej Times.
Divers are not supposed to
touch the sharks, the 12-year-old recalled, and this was a rule they closely followed.
"I was at the bottom of the sea and I was able to see 20 to 30 sharks above my head. But my dad missed the best part as he had to go up earlier than I did," said Tisya, who last year became the youngest junior advanced open-water scuba diver in the Indian state of Odisha.
The Alimatha Jetty site is a worldfamous spot for diving with nurse sharks — making it a staple on divers' bucket lists.
Priyadarshee, 47, completed his 50th dive at a site off the tiny island of Fulidhoo in the Maldives. Recalling the experience, the Indian expat
said: "The highlight of this dive was the presence of large schools of batfish who accompanied us all throughout our dive. The longfin batfish is a very curious omnivore, and it often approaches divers. At one point, we were also accompanied by blacktip Reef sharks.”
For Priyadarshee, the best part of it all was having his daughter as his diving buddy.
"For the first time, ‘we' – father and daughter — went on an exclusive dive trip. I have done these dive trips alone. But this was special because my buddy was my daughter. In the Maldives, we did seven dives… three in Maafushi and four in Fulidhoo,” he said.