Tiger sharks are named for the dark vertical stripes they have when they are young that generally lighten as they reach adulthood. They have a reputation for being dangerous and aggressive; per National Geographic, they are second only to great white sharks when it comes to attacking human beings. As reported by the Florida Museum’s International Shark Attack File, from 1580 to the present, tiger sharks have been implicated in 131 confirmed, unprovoked attacks, 34 of them fatal. They tend to be between 10 and 14 feet long and are excellent hunters with great senses of sight and smell, very sharp, serrated teeth, and strong jaws capable of crushing the shells of sea turtles. 

Despite all of these terrifying facts, marine biologist Kori Garza told Good Morning America that she gets a “serene feeling” when she’s swimming in the ocean with what she called “big beautiful predators.” Perhaps the tiger shark she encountered in November of 2018 could sense her comfort and ease when it decided to make its presence known to her and her team as they were diving in the Pacific Ocean at a shark sanctuary in French Polynesia. “We all just paused, jaws dropped and were like, ‘Now that’s a shark,'” Garza told Good Morning America. “It was so much bigger than what you would expect anything in the water to naturally be coming towards you.” Garza and her team got about an hour with the shark and were unable to tag it as that would have required capturing it, which has been banned since 2006. 

Tiger sharks can be hard to study because they move so fast

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