Seeing a Great White for the first time is nothing like the movies. There is no sudden burst of foreboding music, no triangular fin cutting ominously through the water, just the crying of gulls, the braying of seals and the slapping of waves against the hull.
Then, from the dark depths of the blue-green sea, a silvery shape begins to well up, grow larger and solidify. Suddenly there it is alongside the boat, larger than one could reasonably have imagined, and the captain of the boat is waving his passengers into the water.
There is no doubt that South Africa is one of the best shark diving destinations in the world.
Cage Diving Lowdown
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| |  Witness a spectacle at sea | |
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Cage-diving is not without its controversies. Opponents of the practice accuse the boats of luring sharks into waters near shore where they are more likely to encounter humans, and of teaching sharks to associate humans with food. Both accusations are without foundation.
Only a foolhardy and commercially suicidal operator would attempt to lure sharks to a place where they are not already present. Great Whites are shy creatures, skittish and diffident and wary of boats and people, and can be sufficiently standoffish even when they are in the area.
That is why cage-dive operations are always in the vicinity of seal colonies – the natural, preferred hunting grounds of the Great Whites. The job of the operator is simply to persuade the sharks already there to show themselves at the surface. This they do by “chumming” the water with a fragrant concoction of mashed fish (rather than the buckets of animal blood and horse meat of popular imagination), allowing people to hop into the cage and watch them, wide-eyed, from close range.
How it Works
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| |  Safely cocooned in a cage | |
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You don’t have to be a scuba diver in order to cage-dive, nor need you fear being dangled in the water at the end of a long and breakable line. Sturdy cages are tethered to the sides of the boat and never float free.
Some operators provide air-hoses so that participants can wait submerged for the shark to come near; others simply instruct shark-watchers to take a deep breath and duck under as the shark approaches. Neither method requires scuba training or experience, and the operator provides all equipment including wetsuits and masks.
Being in the water with a Great White allows you to appreciate the human egocentrism of a belief that sharks are motivated by anything so flattering as a desire to eat us. The most humbling aspect of the experience is the realisation that they are entirely indifferent to humans – they pass the cage again and again, turning and gliding and occasionally bumping it, never with so much as the slightest flicker of interest in the contents.
Shark Diving Destinations
- The three most popular locations for White Shark cage-diving are False Bay (where a fortunate few sometimes witness the behavioural speciality of the local sharks – spectacular aerial leaps clear out of the water, usually with a seal between their jaws); in the beautiful blue waters around Seal Island in Mossel Bay, and in Shark Alley, the channel between the Dyer Island seal colony and the mainland at Gansbaai, near Hermanus.
- Sightings are almost guaranteed, especially in high summer months (December to February) when the sharks are often too busy preying on seal pups to entertain tourists. Be prepared for long waits on the high seas even on days when they do turn up.
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Photos courtesy and copyright of SharkWatchSA