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A shark peeled off the group and swam straight towards me. This wasn’t a dream, it was for real. It moved with lazy flicks of its tail, all beady eyes, huge diabolic smile, and chipped teeth protruding. It passed like a space ship, just millimetres above my head. I could feel my hair stand on end.

Luckily I wasn’t alone in the ocean. This was actually a ‘shark dive’, an organised trip off the island of Grand Bahama, with a feeder and guards standing by to make sure that things didn’t develop into a feeding frenzy (with us on the menu).

After decades of denial, the claims that sharks don’t really exist in Caribbean waters have been dropped. Instead, the Bahamas now offer them as a tourist attraction. There are six or seven scuba operators who lead guided shark dives. It certainly adds some spice to your average sun, sea and sand holiday. Our dive started with a briefing, and a joke, by the shark feeder:

“Is there anyone apart from me and Salvatore”, he asked, pointing to one of the guards, “who’s on their first shark dive...?” Ha ha.

Quaking slightly, we were given an introductory briefing, with tips on shark habits. By all accounts male sharks, apart from leaving bitemarks on the females’ dorsal fins in their moments of passion, are curiously well endowed. They have two penises. In case one breaks off, apparently. Well, that’s foresight for you. But I decided it was a bit optimistic to think I would remember to look out for shark private parts while these predators were prowling around me in open water. One piece of advice I was happy to take, though: Don’t take your hands away from your body...

Moments later we were cruising over the Bahamian sea, postcard-blue. We dropped anchor and the feeder hauled on a chain mail suit. Then, tanks on and masks in place we jumped in and descended fifty feet to the sea floor. We knelt in a line with our backs to an old hyperbaric chamber. A video man hung above, filming, and guards stood at either end of the line, facing outwards.

Then the feeder walked in front of us, moving in slow motion because of the weight of the chain mail, like an underwater zombie. He stood fifteen feet away, and with hunched shoulders began pulling a frozen fish out of PVC tube.

Suddenly the whole place was alive with sharks. They certainly know it’s feeding time. They cruised in, all the more menacing because of their amazing grace, circling the feeder and moving in to snatch the food from his hand. About a dozen Caribbean reef sharks, adults and juveniles arrived, then some blacktip sharks, then a sting ray, a rubbery stealth bomber with a four foot ‘wing’ span. All were hungry and greedy.

It was quite orderly to begin with, as the feeder teased the sharks with the frozen bait. He even grabbed a couple and held them in his arms and they didn’t mind. Then they began to circle faster. Some nuzzled into his stomach and chest, almost gnawing him for food.

And then, for a moment, it looked as though it might become a feeding frenzy. His mask was knocked off. He put down the PVC pipe to correct it and as soon as he took his hand away from his body a shark took a nip at it. He was swallowed in a whirlwind of grey shark skin. At his feet the stingray shot in, sucking on the pipe with its incredible hoovering power and pulling out at least one fish. Mask on, the feeder hit it away and carried on. Calm restored.

A few moments later my shark peeled off with a twitch of the tail and snaked across ever so slowly, bearing down on me... Later I saw the whole thing on video. It did pass just over my head, through my hair in fact, which was actually standing on end. It was suspended in the water, or that’s my claim anyway.

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