These incredible photographs show the moment a diver got to within touching distance of a 33ft (10m) shark. Three friends, including photographer Pablo Cersosimo, 45, from Argentina, found the whale shark – which is relatively harmless but would have weighed around 20 tonnes – on a day’s diving trip 28 miles off Isla Mujeres in Mexico.
The married photographer said: ‘From the first moment the shark approached, I was amazed by the sheer size of the huge creature. I’d never seen sharks this big in the open sea. There were a whole group of whale sharks eating all around us but they were so busy feeding that they didn’t care very much about our presence.
‘In the water the shark looked really big and I felt like a small piece of paper floating in the sea when the shark got close. When I say close, I mean close – he was less than 30cm (1ft) from me. The shark’s movements were graceful and slow, but he still managed to cover distances very fast compared to us humans. My favourite photo shows my friend swimming towards the shark as it gives you a complete dimension of the size of this beautiful beast.’
This photograph shows the incredible moment a brave diver got to within touching distance of a 33ft (10m) whale shark near Isla Mujeres in Mexico
A group of friends found this whale shark among a group of others after they went on a day’s trip diving 28 miles off the Mexican island
Photographer Pablo Cersosimo, 45, from Argentina, said: ‘From the first moment the shark approached, I was amazed by the sheer size of the huge creature’
The group of three got to within a very close distance of the mighty sea creature, which would have weighed around 20 tonnes
The photographer said: ‘In the water the shark looked really big and I felt like a small piece of paper floating in the sea when the shark got close’