A MARINE expert had a hectic last day at work when he dived into shark-infested waters.

Centre curator Chris Brown stripped down to his boxer shorts and grabbed a snorkel to make emergency repairs when a nurse shark had bitten through the bottom of its quarantine tank at Weymouth Sea Life Park.

With water leaking from three holes, Mr Brown had to act fast.

He said: "Actually the sharks were the least of my worries.

"We also have a 65lb giant grouper in the tank.

"We got it from Belgium and I think its previous handler must have hand-fed it because he kept coming up trying to bite my ankles."

In the end staff members had to distract the creature with long-handled fishing nets, but the grouper continued taking bites out of the nets.

The distraction worked, though, and Mr Brown managed to repair the damage by placing three breeze blocks wrapped in plastic over the holes.

The repairs are temporary and permanent work will be carried out after the sharks have been moved to another heated tank.

Mr Brown added: "We also have eight black-tipped reef sharks , two six foot sandbar sharks and a zebra shark in the tank.

"The black tips are really shy but the sandbars are confident and come right up to you. They even hit me a few times with their tails as I was working.

"We had to do something straight away.

"The water was leaking out fairly slowly but if we hadn't done something then obviously the sharks would have been in big trouble."

The tank is a heated facility located in the park's bio services section and is used to house and treat tropical sharks before they are moved on to to any of the other 18 Sea Life Centres across Europe.

Chris is now flying out to Miami to assist in a research project to catch and tag sharks off the Florida coast, including the much larger tiger, bull and hammerhead sharks.