This is the remarkable moment a UK diver became surrounded by 30 reef sharks in the Maldives.<br /><br />Richard Stevens was expecting to only see half a dozen reef sharks when he went diving in Rasdhoo Madivaru, only to be greeted by 30 of them all circling around the current.<br /><br />In the video, a number of female sharks - heavily pregnant with fresh bite marks on them due to the recent mating - can be seen, he seen.<br /><br />The divers revisited the same diving spot the next morning but the sharks had disappeared.<br /><br />"It really was a complete one-off - the guides had never seen anything like it and they dive it all the time," says Stevens, a regular diver who runs Black Manta Photography from his base in Orpington, on the outskirts of south-east London. <br /><br />"(It was) a truly once in a lifetime experience that we were literally in the right place at the right time for!" adds Stevens. <br /><br />"For the rest of the week while diving we referred to this as our very own 'Blue Planet II' moment," he says, referring to the 2017 BBC nature series. <br /><br />The sharks may look heavily edited, but there is no trickery involved: Stevens changed the camera settings to remove the blue-green hue from the water.
