Cage Diving with Great White Sharks

Well today was a big day! We woke up super early (we had to leave before 6am!) and drove down to Gansbaai. It was about a 2 hour drive down and were greeted with a nice breakfast spread. After a brief safety demonstration we were herded to the boat. We went out to sea about 10 minutes while sea gulls flew right along beside us. It was kind of wacky how they flew at the exact same speed as we were going. Then one of the crew held out part of his sandwich and they flew right down and shared some. Then we anchored down and waited.

And waited. This area is famous for being one of the top most reliable places in the world to see Great White Sharks, but we had been warned for the past few days that it might be cancelled due to poor conditions. It seems the water temperature had dropped suddenly and the sharks don't like that, and also there had been several orcas spotted in the area which are the only predator of the sharks. So overall not great conditions but they had seen some sharks out yesterday so the decision was made last-minute to try today.

Luckily it was a gorgeous clear warm day (over 90 degrees!) so we were able to enjoy the nice weather on the boat. There were also lots of other people on the boat and we spent a good bit of time talking with a girl from Alabama. But we waited over 3 hours with no action at all, other than a few splashes which elicited a lot of excitement but turned out to be a seal.

They tried to bait the sharks by throwing out chum, which was a tuna mixture and was very oily so it stayed on the surface of the water to supposedly draw the shark to us. They also had a floating device which looked like the silhouette of a seal from below in order to intrigue the shark as well as a fish head for bait. 

Eventually the captain got a call from another boat that said they had a shark and we could come and "share" it with them. So we pulled anchor and moved over there. That's when we got our first glimpse of the shark. It was huge! It was probably the biggest we ended up seeing today, but I was unprepared so I didn't get any pictures. 

But that's when all the activity really started. They quickly shuffled 8 divers into their wetsuits and lowered them into the cage. They were in there probably about 10 minutes until they had a couple of good passes of the shark before they rotated to a new group of divers. They again were only in about 15 minutes until they got a couple of good views so they rotated again. We were in the third group.

Oh my gosh the water was frigid. It physically hurt to get in even though we were wearing really thick wetsuits. At first I bobbed up and down energetically trying to get used to it and warm up (I was on swim team- I know the drill) and I would be looking all around for sharks while everyone else huddled up high as possible out of the water. 

We waited. And waited some more. After a while a seal swam right by and I jumped down to look at him. He hovered right on the other side of the cage looking directly at me while I was looking at him for a good few seconds. I feel like we had a moment. But then I had to go up for air (we didn't have any snorkel or scuba gear) and that was the end of it. So that was a bit exciting.

And then we waited some more. After awhile they told us to get out of the cage and sit on top of it so we didn't have to sit in the freezing water forever. Honestly this was even more uncomfortable though because my body had finally gotten numb from the cold so then I had to thaw out again. Eventually we got another call from a different boat with a similar message; that there was a shark over there and we could go join them. So we hopped out and drove over there, then hopped back in (so cold!!).

Then we finally got to see a shark!! We had a couple of decent passes at it but then we got a really good one. The bait was floating right in front of the cage and he swam up out of nowhere right to the bait and hovered there for a second, letting us get a good look at him. Then he swam around it and doubled back so we could get a good look at his teeth. It was so exciting! I so wish I had a (working) underwater camera so I could share this with you all.

We were in the water for probably almost an hour at that point, but after that they quickly shuffled us out so that the final group could have a chance. They waited for maybe 5 minutes before they saw their shark and then we packed up and headed out. We were out on the sea for about 6 hours total. It sounds like they are normally out for about 3-4 hours and usually everyone gets multiple chances in the water. But I suppose we were just lucky to see any sharks today after they had seen no sharks most of the week.

So that was our day! We drove back to our airbnb and grabbed some pizza for dinner. We're pretty tired after an early morning and lots of time in the sun. I do have a couple of pictures of the sharks from the boat that I'll share. Our new friend from Alabama took a video of our shark that we saw while we were in the cage.  Here it is, you can kind of see the cage at the bottom of the frame which Matt and I are in:

We went with "Great White Shark Tours" for our trip and we were pretty happy with them. There are 8 different companies that do and offer pretty much the exact same thing so we just ended up picking one based on price and who offered me a discount. I did find a "sharkbookings.com" website that seems to work with all 8 and will just put you on one of them. Then if for some reason your boat ends up not going out then they can re-book you on a different one. That seemed intriguing but I didn't like not know who exactly we'd be going with so I just picked one of them myself.