Toothy Critters:
iThe most popular item on the young hostel tourist list of things to do in Cape Town is to go Cage Diving with Great White Sharks!
A couple of hours drive from here is the undisputed world capital for Great White Shark watching... Its where Nature Channel and National Geographic etc all come to get those amazing shots of sharks leaping out of the water as they hunt seals or under-water pictures of huge sharks flashing rows of razor sharp teeth.
Well, Im a tourist and Ive got some time, and like everyone else it seems , I too find these "men in the grey suits" (a very Australian euphemism for sharks) fascinating creatures... So, off I went and spent a day with the Great Whites of South Africa.
It takes a coupe of hours to drive to the little town where the sharks hang out. The shuttle bus pick-up is routine other than its often at 5am (moves around depending on the tides) and the bus drives from hostel to hotel collecting bleary eyed tourists in ones and twos till its full... then we head off along a highway toward our destination.
Once there we are given a reasonable breakfast, given a bit of a chat by the tour people, watch an instructional video and of course asked to sign the standard "blood sheet" waiver form (the same stuff with any tourist activity). Then we are trooped outside and assigned wet-suits, life jackets and heavy vinyl wet-weather jackets for protection from wind, spray, and rain (Its a grey day today but no sign of rain). Then we head down to the dock and load up onto the waiting boat...
Its about 10m long aluminium "shark-cat" style boat with two decks and a thousand horsepower of outboard engines arranged across the back of the boat. The boat then heads out into the cold looking ocean for about 20 minutes or so and we then drop anchor surprisingly close to the shore (only about 300-400m off the beach).
Its a grey sort of day and there is a fair wind blowing but they arrange the anchor ropes to hold the boat sideways to the wind to create a calmer area alongside the leeward side of the boat. Then while all of us tourists are fitting ourselves into unfamiliar wetsuits (with plenty of rye comments about being bait and "I wonder how this wet-suit got this big tear across the leg?" etc drifting among us), the crew drop the steel cage off the back of the boat and bring it along-side ready for the first "clients".
The cage is long and thin... Its about 3m tall, 5m long and 1m wide. It has a steel mesh covering with 10cmx20cm openings and a few rails along the front inside the cage for hands and feet to grip... Note it would be a very bad idea to stick hands feet or arms through this mesh, so stroking, petting and teeth cleaning for the sharks is "discouraged...Rats! and I even brought my spare tooth brush along just to show the sharks I care. The cage has multiple floats and is firmly tied to the side of the boat at all times.
Into this cage they fit 8 tourists at a time which is rather a squeeze I must say.
Meanwhile the crew have also been "chumming" the water but its not with "blood and gore" as you may imagine... Its fish waste with lots of fish oils and while it no doubt stinks to high heaven as far as the sharks are concerned, its pretty mild looking as far as the tourists are concerned.
Once all is in readiness, the first 8 tourists are lined up and a weight belt is slung over their shoulder, a pair of goggles fitted to their face (no need for a snorkel), and they are summarily instructed to climb down into the cage.
...
And while that is easy enough, its certainly the most uncomfortable part of the whole experience... The Atlantic water is BLOODY COLD... Its about 13degC and you have a 7mm full wet-suit with hood and booties but I tell you, as that water seeps into the suit it really takes your breath away... Im a bit of a "cold water woos" but there was not a person amongst us who was not glad to get out of the water once our 30 min session in the cage was up.
While we were all getting dressed, the sharks had started to come to see what the smell was all about... Id seen a couple of the big fish briefly surface alongside the boat and they were indeed BIG sharks... Just like they advertised and just as you see them in those Nature Channel documentaries ... Wow!
So, now you are shoulder to shoulder with the person next to you in a rather small cage with very large fish somewhere near-by. First you are just trying to deal with the FREEZING cold water and forget all about the sharks for a few minutes. Then it takes a bit of jostling to ensure someone else doesn't have their hands/arms in front of your viewing space :)
And then one of the crew on the boat shouts "down in front" or "down left" etc to let you know that a shark is coming close.... So then you take a big breath and duck down in the cage and hold yourself under with the rails in the cage, and peer into the murky water looking for the fish.
That's not metaphor, the water really is very murky and visibility is only about 2m which means you cant see anything at all more than 4m away and things are very blurry in to 1m or so. (Apparently its usually not great but it changes day to day and you basically get what you get).
Anyway, out of the murk comes a shadow that rapidly gets VERY big and is completely unmistakably a great white shark... It swims past the cage very close and you find you have no problem holding your breath as long as the beast is in view, which in fact is only 5-10 seconds at most. then the shark swims off again for a few minutes. And then of course there is the magnifying effect of looking through water... Things appear to be about a third bigger than they really are for human eyes, and when you are looking at the mouth of a shark over 4m long and its less than 1m from you...well, You get to see an awful lot of large white teeth! :)
We saw about 8 sharks between 3m and 4.5m in length in the time we were there and we had about a dozen close passes by the sharks while I was in the cage. The sharks are being lured to come close to the cage with a seal decoy and a baited line being pulled past the cage by the boat crew, so you are pretty much guaranteed to get some slashing and thrashing right up in front of the cage. And when the thrashing is right there in front of you, and a shark fin or tail sweeps past you and brushes you through the cage openings, well, lets say there were more than a few people squeeling away :))
But I have to say that the whole "in cage" experience was something of a disappointment for me!
That was because I felt absolutely no fear at all while I was in the cage... it was more like standing in front of a big screen TV watching a video while soaked in cold water... It felt really remote and I just didn't think that was the right feeling for being in the very immediate company of these amazing creatures.
Not that I can think of any way of making it any more "real" without making it dangerous... The danger is the real point and its a pretty much black-and-white type thing... You are either in the cage or out of it... In the cage is completely safe and out of it is completely dead!
Unfortunately I didn't manage to get any good close pictures cos I didn't bring my good camera and didn't have a polarizing filter to take out the water glare. the weather was also grey so that didn't help either but I did have fun and I did see the big fish Up Close and Personal :)
