So many things have been going on that it's hard to find the time to catch up and write about all of them. I would be remiss if I neglected our once in a lifetime experience of cage diving with great white sharks, so I'm going back a few weeks here.
I'm not sure why this picture turned out so tiny, but this is a group shot of the people in our cage. We don't know the girl on the far left (who turned out to be a gynecologist from Colombia or something, strangely enough??) but the others are all people we know. There is Pam, Jesse, me, Jeremy and Claire.
Some shots of Jeremy and I possibly going to our imminent death - luckily that wasn't the case! Hehe. We were the first group into the water, and we got to stay in the cage for about 45 minutes.
SHARKS!!!!! We saw three great white sharks during our time in the cage, and I think there were about seven lurking around our boat over the course of the day. Calypso was very clever and had underwater cameras that we could borrow. It was really surreal, and hard to get the right timing for photos, but we managed to get some decent ones. In the middle picture of the set, you can see a red cloud in the water, which is from the bloody goo ("chum") they were throwing in to attract the sharks. It was a little strange to have little pieces of flesh floating down over you while you were inside the cage.
This is definitely the best shot of the day! Jeremy caught Claire and the shark at the perfect moment for an amazing shark 'selfie' (yes, technically not a selfie since she didn't take it, but...it is what it is!)
We were on the boat for a total of 12 hours. Being the first ones down in the cage was cool, but it also meant that we had to wait for 6 additional groups (x 45 minutes each) to have their turns. It was a beautiful sunny day, so we took the opportunity to nap on the upper deck of the boat.
Shark cage diving was a great experience and I would highly recommend it. It's not something I ever feel the need to do again, but I'm glad we took the opportunity to do it and were accompanied by friends. Anyone else tempted?
Some additional info about cage diving from Wikipedia:
Cage diving is most common at sites where great whites are frequent including the coast of South Africa, the Neptune Islands in South Australia,[73] and Guadalupe Island in Baja California. Cage diving and swimming with sharks is a focus for a booming tourist industry due to its popularity.[74][75] A common practice is to chum the water with pieces of fish to attract the sharks. These practices may make sharks more accustomed to people in their environment and to associate human activity with food; a potentially dangerous situation. By drawing bait on a wire towards the cage, tour operators lure the shark to the cage, possibly striking it, exacerbating this problem. Other operators draw the bait away from the cage, causing the shark to swim past the divers.
At present, hang baits are illegal off Isla Guadalupe and reputable dive operators do not use them. Operators in South Africa and Australia continue to use hang baits and pinniped decoys.[76] In South Australia, playing rock music recordings underwater, including the AC/DCalbum Back in Black has also been used experimentally to attract sharks.[77]
Companies object to being blamed for shark attacks, pointing out that lightning tends to strike humans more often than sharks bitehumans.[78] Their position is that further research needs to be done before banning practices such as chumming, which may alter natural behavior.[79] One compromise is to only use chum in areas where whites actively patrol anyway, well away from human leisure areas. Also, responsible dive operators do not feed sharks. Only sharks that are willing to scavenge follow the chum trail and if they find no food at the end then the shark soon swims off and does not associate chum with a meal. It has been suggested that government licensing strategies may help enforce these suggested advisories.[76]
I do really appreciate the debate about chum being used!
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