LIVE BAIT

In a remote corner of the South Pacific a fearless free diver has befriended sharks.

- CHRIS VAN LEUVER

Four thousand miles west of Los Angeles and 200 miles north of Tahiti in the South F Pacific, a ring of white coral atolls surface out of warm turquoise waters. Here, in Tikehau, French Polynesia, looking out his thatch house, shark swimmer Denis Grosmaire watches over migrating whales, and by his estimation, 30 black-tipped sharks.

"I like to dive barefoot with tiger sharks," says the 44-year old Grosmaire, describing the day this photo was captured in Tikehau in November 2021. Thirty feet down at the edge of a coral reef that drops thousands of feet into the Pacific, he was swimming with two other tiger sharks when an unfamiliar 1,100-pound tiger shark appeared out of the blue.

"She is a female, young, less than nine feet and pregnant. I will have some nephews soon,” the Frenchman says with a grin.

Grosmaire grew up spearfishing and making four-hour open ocean swims in French Polynesia-he's lived here since age 2–and he knows the dangers of swimming with sharks, which kill 10 people each year worldwide. Tiger sharks, his favorite, can grow up to 15 feet and 1,400 pounds, and they're the second- or third-most predatory fish behind bull sharks and great whites.