Up-Close and Personal Shark Encounters that Shark Week Fans Can Safely Enjoy All Year

Kelli Bender

Shark Week returns once again on Sunday, July 28.

But for many shark aficionados, one week of wall-to-wall shark content isn’t enough to satisfy their great white appetite.

Luckily, there are ways for shark lovers to enjoy fin-tastic fun all year, and we’re not taking about nature shows.

Destinations around the globe offer a variety of up-close, exhilarating shark encounters that are safe for both humans and sharks.

To celebrate the arrival of Shark Week, and to help us get through the dark days following Discovery’s solid week of shark programming, we rounded up five amazing shark encounters that you can book right now.

1. Snorkeling with Sharks at Conrad Bora Bora Nui in French Polynesia

The Lagoon Safari Snorkeling Experience at this luxury hotel offers participants the chance to snorkel freely among sharks and stingrays. Snorkelers can expect to share the turquoise waters with blacktip sharks.

2. Cage Diving with Guaranteed Shark Sightings at Turtle Bay Resort in Oahu, Hawaii

This resort’s North Shore Shark Adventure is for courageous tourists only. Guests who sign up for this experience get to pop into a cage that is lowered in the waters around Oahu’s North Shore – a natural habitat for sharks. Since this is an area that sharks naturally call home, Turtle Bay says shark sightings are guaranteed. Guests can also expect to see dolphins and sea turtles too.

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Getty

3. Shark Tagging at Grand Isle Resort in Exuma, Bahamas.

At this resort shark lovers can help with shark conservation by setting up a shark tagging adventure. On these trips, guests join marine biologists on a boat in the waters surrounding Exuma. The trip is spent searching out tiger, hammerhead, reef and nurse sharks, so the fish can be tagged and released. Tagging allows marine biologists to track sharks and make sure the correct efforts are being taken to protect shark populations.

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Getty

4. Great White Cage Diving at White Shark Guesthouse in South Africa

South Africa, with its surrounding islands full of fur seals, is a popular destination for great white sharks. This allows the White Shark Guesthouse to offer great white shark cage diving to the most daring shark fans. Guests on this experience don’t need scuba experience to meet a great white face to face. Since great whites are surface feeders, cage divers can expect to see plenty of sharks up-close while they are in the cage and on the boat.

Courtesy Mandalay Bay
Courtesy Mandalay Bay

5. Dive into a Shark Thank at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas

Enjoy this Vegas hotel’s 1.3 million-gallon, predator-based aquarium from the inside. Guests can take a dive inside the aquarium and swim among the hotel’s sand tiger, white tip reef and sandbar sharks.