Shark diving

On our first day in Cape Town we had a bus waiting to take us to our shark diving trip.  The place we were going was about 2 hours away, but the bus ride was fun because there were about 20 of us from SAS.  We arrived at a beautiful little house with the most incredible view of the ocean.  We were given a lovely breakfast with fresh fruit, biscuits, and pancakes.  I almost forgot we were going to be diving with Great White Sharks until I was given the waiver form, which basically said that they are not responsible for anything that happens to us.  In other words, if the shark attacks us, they are not liable.  With that, we loaded onto the boat and headed out into the ocean.

Once we got out there, I surprised myself and volunteered to go into the cage first.  The truth is I knew once I saw a shark I might back down so it was better for me to just go into the cage before I got too freaked out.  So the first 6 of us put on our wetsuits and hopped into the cage.  We held onto a bar in front of us as the top of the cage was closed above us.  We were given weight belts so we would stay down and we had snorkel masks to see.  However, we didn’t have a tank or anything to breathe into.  Instead, we just went under water and held our breath whenever we were instructed to do so by the captain.  We soon learned this was more than enough time to see the sharks because they usually circled the boat so we were actually able to hold our breath longer than they stayed in front of us anyway.

The way that the crew drew the sharks towards the boat was by throwing chum into the water which attracts the sharks’ sense of smell.  However, in order for the sharks to actually see something, they also threw a tuna head into the water.  When we first got into the cage, we waited and waited but nothing happened.  The captain decided that we should go to another place which was a little bit further away.   So we got out of the cage, came back onto the boat and then went back into the cage when we were at the new location.  Once again we stayed in the cage and waited.  At this point, I wasn’t even nervous anymore.  We started joking around and taking underwater videos.  And then we heard “Go down.  Shark left.”  I followed the instructions and went under. 

When the first shark came in front of the cage I think I swallowed 3 gulps of water from yelling.  It was crazy.  I’ve never seen a shark before, aside from on TV and now I was in the water, next to one.  I watched it slowly swim by and then it would be gone.  We would come up for air and wait until it circled around again.  Each time it came, it would go towards the bait and then swim away.  A few times it came really close to the cage and grabbed for the bait with its mouth.  (In other words, we saw the teeth… pretty scary.)  I thought that we were done when we got out of the cage, but then I realized that watching the shark from the top deck of the boat was just as cool.  We could see the fin out of water and even got to watch the shark jump up and grab the bait.  I still can’t believe I was so close to Great White Sharks and probably wouldn’t believe it now if it weren’t for all the awesome videos and pictures we took.