The day began at 4:25 am. A van from White Shark Projects, a shark cage diving company in SA, was to pick us up outside our apartment gate. As WSP is located in Gansbaai, SA, approximately two hours from Cape Town, our van drivers must have gotten up at a little after 2 am, to come and fetch us. It was dark on the drive to Gansbaai, so the van slept until we arrived on the coast. We were greeted by two women, and shuffled into a sort of house, out of which WSP works, and told to help ourselves to a breakfast table of cereals, muffins, toast, eggs, and yogurt, along with milk, juice, and coffee. It was about 7 am.
We all dragged our feet to the breakfast table, and ate while the women passed around forms to fill out, along with emergency contact numbers. My hand shook as I filled it out, dear god please don’t let them need to call my dad for any reason. One by one we slipped our bathing suits on under our clothes in the bathrooms, and listened to Gerald, our boat driver, give us a few details and a brief outline of how the day would go. The group consisted of 18 SSA (Semester Study Abroad) students and one man from Australia. We were all bundled up in our clothes and the companies own bright orange wind jackets, and helped into life jackets. Then it was up the ladder onto the boat, slipping the boat into the water, and we were off onto one the most exhilarating and terrifying experiences of my life.
We took the boat about twenty minutes from the shore. I sat in the boat, freezing my ass off and second-guessing my decision to embark on this fearful journey. But the sunrise was beautiful, sparkling off the water and hitting our eyes.
Sea gulls flocked our boat and one of the crewmembers cut a chunk of tuna from the bucket and fed them from his hand.
As we sailed on, the wind whipping my hair, one of the crewmembers began preparing the chum. Chum is a mixture of cut up tuna fish, fish oil, and ocean water. Once the boat has slowed down and is getting nearer to the place where it will anchor down, the chum is poured, bucket by bucket, into the ocean. The hope is that the sharks will smell the chum, and follow the trail to the boat. And so we sat for a bit, after the crew (the driver, the videographer/boss of the trip, and three other hands on crewmen) had anchored the boat and spilled more chum around the boat.
They also threw a line, a tuna fish attached, into the water, pulling it back and forth along the water. Suddenly, after mere moments of the fish hitting the water, the fin of a shark emerged by the side of the boat. The first shark I had ever seen with my own eyes!
Quickly, Andy, the videographer and boss, passed around wet suits, seven ply (whatever that means), booties, goggles, and weighted belts to group number one. I, of course, had volunteered for group number one, the first five divers to enter the cage. I struggled with the wetsuit. It was thick and tight and impossible to get on! At last I squeezed myself into the suit, pulling the hood over my head and zipping myself into the most claustrophobic piece of clothing known to man, zipped on my booties, wore the weighted belt like a sash, and strapped on my goggles, which covered my nose and forced me to breath through my mouth only.
I was the last of the five to enter the cage. The cage had already been lowered into the water, with about two feet still above, and was strapped to the side of the boat. I climbed down the rungs of the cage and was immediately engulfed in the 10.7°C Atlantic Ocean. I gasped for breath, the cold was almost unbearable. But it was too late. The crew closed the top of the cage and readied us for our first trip under the water. We started with our hands holding the top of the cage above us and our feet on the yellow roped rung of the cage.
When the crew yelled “down, down, down”, loudly and with a bit of aggression, we sucked in air and pulled ourselves below the water, slipping our felt under a bar at the bottom of the cage and holding onto the red bar with our hands. The scene was unreal. Schools of fish brushed right by my face, but in an instant it was over as I ran out of breath. The trial run was unnerving, but it was finished, and I knew how to continue. The underwater camera I had bought was useless, the crew commented. The water was murky today and it would be hard to see a foot in front of you. As we gabbed with our heads above water, the crew immediately yelled about an oncoming shark. I breathed in and pulled myself below the water. Looking left and right I couldn’t see much, the water truly was foggy. But, out of nowhere, a flash of gray came into view directly in front of me and the tail of a great white shark flapped against the corner of the cage, my corner, right in front of me!
It was exhilarating and deathly frightening at the same time. And that was the closest I got to a shark. For the whole of the twenty minutes the five of us were in the cage we saw three sharks, one of which came directly towards the girls to my right, close enough for them to see its teeth and the scars on its head.
At last it was time to get out of the water. The experience was incredible and I am so very glad I participated in this momentous event, but the water was cold, I couldn’t breathe, and I was ready to get out.
After I had been in the cage, I sat on the upper deck watching everyone else. I had a much better view of the sharks from above; the water was beautifully green and not nearly as murky from above as it actually was in the water. While we were out on the boat our group saw six different sharks total. The crew told us we were extremely lucky because they had taken a group out the day before and had only seen one shark for about thirty seconds, and all the boats around us that day had not seen any! We were the few lucky ones. We were lucky enough to see a baby shark swim up to the cage and bite it, getting stuck for a few seconds while we got a perfect view of a baby great white shark. We were lucky enough to watch a 3.5 meter shark take the bait of tuna fish whole, leaving us a hookless rope, and yet a shark tooth wedged in the buoy attached to the rope.
We were lucky enough to have gorgeous sunshine the entire morning, continually beating down on our backs, glimmering off the Atlantic, and making it easier to warm up after we exerted incredible efforts to pull the wetsuits off ourselves. The morning was a success, and by 11 am we were already on our way back to shore, leaving behind us the sun, the Atlantic, the great white sharks, and the most exhilarating memory I have ever made.
Back at the house we were served soup, bread, juice, and coffee, and one of the crewmembers played us the video footage he had been taking throughout our trip on the ocean. The video was for sale, and I bought it. It was expensive, but I want to be able to show everyone and anyone that I have gone shark cage diving in South Africa, the only place you can go shark cage diving, in the peak season, not to mention at the same time that the lame U.S. was celebrating shark week on the Discovery Channel. Oh, and by the way, did I mention I went with the same company that Ricky Martin and Nicholas Cage went shark cage diving with?
But the point is, ask me about shark cage diving and I’ll tell you about it, then I’ll do you one better and show you the actual footage.
By 12 pm we were on the road back to Cape Town. However, our driver made a pit stop in Hermanus, an ocean town known for whale watching and it’s famous whale festival, and I saw myself some whales.
Needless to say, the day was an extreme success, well worth the money, well worth the lack of sleep, and well worth the constant smell of fish, still found in my clothes I worn on that most special day. It’s a no brainer that if you ever have the chance, go shark cage diving.
Off to celebrate National Women’s Day tomorrow!
(1. Sunrise at 7am, 2. Our boat, 3. The sun as we got into the water, starting the day, 4. Fish eating out of the crewman's hand, 5. Chum and frozen tuna fish, 6. Throwing out the line, 7. Me getting into the cage, 8. Group #1 in the cage, 9. The shark that hit the cage by me, 10. Dive group #1, 11 & 12. Great white sharks! 13. Shark tooth, 14. Sun/water as we head for land, 15. Nicholas Cage and Ricky Martin, 16. Artsy cage, 17. Artsy boat, 18. Whale at Hermanus)
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