Standing Among Nurse Sharks

Nurse sharks are gentle and slow moving, and they come to you in water shallow enough to stand in. No mask, no snorkel, no diving. You walk down the dock stairs into the water, and dozens of resident nurse sharks glide around you while staff supervise from the dock. The classic spot is Compass Cay Marina in the Exumas, the Bahamas, in the Caribbean. The marina's owner brought a few nurse sharks here years ago and fed them as pets. They stayed, bred, and the marina became their sanctuary, so the sharks are used to people and come to the dock on their own. In Belize, in Central America, the Shark Ray Alley off Caye Caulker offers the same shallow water encounter with nurse sharks, together with stingrays.