Shark Cage Diving
One of the tourist attractions in South Africa is cage diving. Beth and I like to dive. We've done it all over the world, so I thought it would be fun to try it with Great White Sharks. The package even offered a money back guarantee--sharks or your money back. Seas too rough to go? Refund. So I signed up. Couldn't talk Beth into it. Can't blame her. Even though the boat trip to Shark Alley was only 20 minutes, we were bobbing and bouncing around out there for an hour, and it was a small boat (smaller than the boat from Jaws), and the pre-trip briefing was primarily about how to keep from getting sea sick and how to throw up in a way that wouldn't result in your puke drifting over your fellow tourists in the cage.
But look what we saw! That's a 4 meter great white, and I was in the cage just out of the frame.
The photo is from this video of our trip. There were 2 white sharks swimming around us, along with another species known as the Copper shark.
It's more like shark cage dunking than to shark cage diving. The max depth on my dive watch was 3 feet. There was no need for scuba gear or a snorkel or any other breathing apparatus. Four of us stood in the cage with our heads above water, shivering, hands gripping bar clearly marked for shark cage participant grabbing, waiting for the guy controlling the rope with the bait to yell "down down!" Then we'd all take a breath and go under to have a look. It didn't always work. About half the time we'd come up and ask each other, "did you see it?". But sometimes we all yelled "wow, that one was big!"
Overall it was a fun experience, and I'd recommend it. We got lucky with a beautiful warm day, and the sharks showed up.
I don't think they're very smart by the way. One of the guys was arguing that they must be very intelligent to be able to migrate from Australia to South Africa, back and forth to the same place every season. I conceded that they have superior navigational abilities. But if they were so smart, why would they come back daily to these boats, lured by buckets of chum, to be teased by tour operators who dangle fish heads on a rope?
The visibility wasn't great and the water was cold (11C/51F), so my GoPro movies weren't as clear as the views from the crew video. But to my surprise, my GoPro caught something that shocked me. I couldn't make it out until I did a bunch of filtering, noise reduction, and contrast enhancement. Amazing.
But look what we saw! That's a 4 meter great white, and I was in the cage just out of the frame.
The photo is from this video of our trip. There were 2 white sharks swimming around us, along with another species known as the Copper shark.
It's more like shark cage dunking than to shark cage diving. The max depth on my dive watch was 3 feet. There was no need for scuba gear or a snorkel or any other breathing apparatus. Four of us stood in the cage with our heads above water, shivering, hands gripping bar clearly marked for shark cage participant grabbing, waiting for the guy controlling the rope with the bait to yell "down down!" Then we'd all take a breath and go under to have a look. It didn't always work. About half the time we'd come up and ask each other, "did you see it?". But sometimes we all yelled "wow, that one was big!"
Overall it was a fun experience, and I'd recommend it. We got lucky with a beautiful warm day, and the sharks showed up.
I don't think they're very smart by the way. One of the guys was arguing that they must be very intelligent to be able to migrate from Australia to South Africa, back and forth to the same place every season. I conceded that they have superior navigational abilities. But if they were so smart, why would they come back daily to these boats, lured by buckets of chum, to be teased by tour operators who dangle fish heads on a rope?
The visibility wasn't great and the water was cold (11C/51F), so my GoPro movies weren't as clear as the views from the crew video. But to my surprise, my GoPro caught something that shocked me. I couldn't make it out until I did a bunch of filtering, noise reduction, and contrast enhancement. Amazing.
Total crack up. Sharks look huge in the video!
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