Ever feel like you're swimming with sharks? (Travel pics)

Wow you got balls of steel!

My balls went back up into my pelvis just looking at those pics!

I'm doing a shark dive at Isla Coiba here in Panama soon. My dive buddy owns Panama Divers and says that there's regularly great whites, bull sharks, tiger sharks and big greys along with the whale sharks, real whales and nurse sharks that are always there.

I'm doing the cage and the free dive...CAN'T WAIT!

Take me! Take me!

J/k, sorta...

Have fun

Despite the fact that I'm wearing a 3 mil in the picture, it was 84f - perfect if you're not swimming around a lot.

Sounds cool, but I'm diving in Roatan, Honduras in November

That's some scary awesome action right there! Great picture.

Imagine what the waiver looks like.

That looks great!!!

someone go get Sharkbait from the Python crew to post his experience here!!!

Nice Photos! That's exciting and scary.

Hmm... Sharkbait... sounds like my kinda guy

Damn! How come YOU aren't taking ME?

Damn! How come YOU aren't taking ME?

Scary stuff.
While swimming in the Ocean here together with my brother a shark approached us.
I saw the shark and realised there was nothing that we could do. Panicking and swimming to the shore did not sound like a good idea. The shark would outswim us and the panic might make it even likelier he would attack. My brother had not seen the shark because the shark was right behind us. I looked my brother straight in the eyes and kept on talking so that he would not see the shark and would not panic. Then the shark "sniffed" my brother and my brother panicked and went swimming to the shore as fast as he could. Luckily for us nothing happened. I know sharks do not like to eat people cause we taste bad to them. My brother who is not from the island did not know this.

Good news for ya... the Caribbean is one of the safest seas in the world to be in terms of shark attack rates. Hard information to swallow, considering someone diving in the same spot as me had to go to the hospital that day. But hey... at least he didn't have to go in the back of an ambulance. Thing is - we were in a spot where people chum the water daily, and the guy was flailing around just like the guys offering up tasty fish heads - so it was prolly a mistake. I had them bumping fins against me, and never felt threatened. The only sharks I have seen in the Caribbean are reef sharks and nurse sharks, and they are both very uninterested in nibbling on humans.

I got bit by four things while in the Bahamas: a lizard I caught, a stray cat I was petting, my boyfriend, and a hermit crab (ok, pinched) I was rescuing from a tall ash tray.

A few years ago, my uncle went surfing in the exact same spot where a guy got chomped by a great white just one day before it happened. Attacks don't happen often in California, but bites tend to be life-threatening and surfers and bodyboarders are prime targets - churning/murky water, black wetsuit-covered legs hanging off of boards, and um, yeah, we pee in our suits for convenience and warmth.

Kudos on trying to keep your brother from panicking (and thus looking like an injured fish). Easier said than done, though - I panicked about ten years ago when snorkeling... I got bit by either a fish or an eel, and bolted back to shore screaming and thrashing so maniacally that my mask fell off. I wiped away the blood and it was just two rows of tiny teeth marks - I probably did more damage on my own by scraping the hell out of myself on the reef trying to get away. My dad wouldn't stop teasing me for the rest of the trip.

I'd hop in the water with sharks in the Caribbean any day, because that would mean, um... that I was in the Caribbean and not here. Lucky you!