This is the remarkable moment a UK diver became surrounded by 30 reef sharks in the Maldives.

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.

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.

The divers revisited the same diving spot the next morning but the sharks had disappeared.

"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.

"(It was) a truly once in a lifetime experience that we were literally in the right place at the right time for!" adds Stevens.

"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.

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.

If you are talking about top 5 dives of your life - this has to be one of them!

This was day one while diving from the Blue Voyager dive safari boat (from Blue O Two) - we descended down to expect half a dozen Grey Reef Sharks only to be confronted by 30 of them, all circling in the current!
Completely unexpected and even caught the dive guides by surprise, as they had never seen these numbers before!

A number of sharks were heavily pregnant as can be seen in the video, with many of the females having fresh bite marks on their rear quarters indicating that there could have been a recent occurrence of fornication.

The sharks were all circling when we arrived, and still there in numbers when we left 60 mins later - we revisited the same location the following morning only to find that every single one of them had disappeared.

A truly once in a lifetime experience, that we were literally in the right place at the right time for!
For the rest of the week while diving we referred to this as 'our very own Blue Planet 2 moment'

Dive site: Rasdhoo Madivaru