The sun slowly descends behind rolling desert hills in the distance. It’s last light casts golden beams through the water, guiding me into the depths as an angular shape materialises. Dark shapes circle us from afar, before moving in for a closer look. Today, I am finally granted the privilege of sharing the endless blue with a creature that has patrolled the world’s oceans for millennia. Carcharhinus Longimanus – the oceanic whitetip. A pelagic shark that spends its entire life cruising out in the open ocean constantly seeking out its next source of food. The name Longimanus refers to the shark’s distinctive large pectoral fins, translating from the Latin as ‘long hands’. Oceanics can grow to approximately three metres in length and can weigh up to around 170kg, making them a formidable apex predator.

I’ve travelled to the Brothers Islands, in the southern Red Sea, to try and encounter one of these incredible predators for myself. The offshore reefs here provide the perfect environment for oceanics and is now one of the few places on the planet where you have a good chance of seeing them. There are two words that sum up the demeanour of these sharks: ‘unnervingly confident’. These are not like any other sharks I have encountered before. Most shark species tend not to want anything to do with humans, so will swim off pretty quickly on approach. This isn’t the case with oceanic whitetips. Due to the emptiness of the open ocean, food sources are few and far between. Their experience is not dissimilar to hunting in a desert, so they investigate any object that’s in their vicinity, including divers. Ocean explorers like Jacques Cousteau quickly learned how this endless search for food dictates the oceanic whitetip’s disposition. When sharing the water with them they should be treated with utmost respect. Cousteau dubbed them the most dangerous of all sharks. They are opportunistic open water sharks that encounter food infrequently, so can’t afford to waste opportunities to feed. Like all sharks, they often use an investigatory bite to enquire further about unknown objects. There are still restrictions on safari vessels when visiting the Brothers Islands and other popular dive sites in the Red Sea after an incident involving a diver last year. The Brothers is a popular dive site where oceanic encounters are fairly common.