Predation

I'll make this brief. Cage diving was AMAZING. Way better than abseiling. We got up at 4am, got picked up at the house at 4:30 and drove for 2 hours to the area with sharks. Everyone slept but me as Tess and I were getting bounced around in the back seat on the bumpy roads. It was dark so we couldn't see squat but on the drive back the South African countryside is beautiful. At least what I saw of it, we slept most of the way back...

We got to a place called Gansbaai, ate breakfast and the skipper briefed us. Then we hopped on the boat and headed out on the water. The sharks have moved closer to the shore so it was only a 15 boat ride out. On the way out we witnessed what they call an Antarctic skewer, where a few black seagulls flew next to the boat and they held chum out for them to grab. Black seagulls are way more awesome than normal ones.


On the way out we saw a common dolphin out in the distance, and on the way home we saw a whale. As if all that wasn't fortunate enough, a total of 11 different great white sharks showed up for us to dive with. Then soon afterwards the skipper yelled "predation on the right! Predation on the right!!" and we watched a great white hunt down a seal. At first it looked like a big foamy chaos, then a small loan fur seal flew out of the water and soon after a great white did the same right behind it. It was incredible, the biologist in me was loving it. Jackiy and I were on the deck cheering for the seal, yelling at him to swim faster. Finally it kind of stopped and one of the crew said the seal got away by swimming behind the shark. We were pretty thrilled.

The diving involved 8mm wetsuits that kept us fairly warm (at least at first) and a giant iron cage that tied to the side of the boat. 5 of us went in at a time, and would stand in the cage at the surface while they poured chum juice and threw bait off the side of the boat. Then the bait guy behind us would yell "Down down down down!" when a shark came around. This was our cue to take a breath, duck under the water and grab a bar to hold ourselves down and watch the shark swim by. Like I said, we saw 11 different great whites come by, they only got the chum bait once and for the most part would just meander by when the bait guy pulled the fish away from them. They were super chill, only one got a hold of the bait and rammed into the cage--I was not in it at the time, but it was awesome to watch from the top of the boat.

The first hand experience:

In all we spent about 3 hours on the boat and saw just about everything there was to see. The crew kept telling us how lucky we were. We decided it was because one of our girls was on her period;she was worried she would attract the sharks, which apparently worked out well. If you ever get the chance, you absolutely must try this.

*All photo creds Catherine, video Ashley