To dive in a shark cage you have to wear a 7mm semi-dry suit, which you cannot put on without help. Then you put on booties and a hood, a mask; and finally 40-50 pounds of weight so you don't float in the cage, but sink to the bottom. You are hooked up to a "hooka" which is a tube of compressed air with a mouth piece on the then the tube is secured to your back. You aren't wearing a tank or BC, so you are more susceptible to the cold.The water is in the sixties, and the cage isn't still. It is bobbing around with the waves. I found that I got sea sick if in the cage right after lunch. You have to hang onto the bars of the cage to stay steady, and not be flung across the underwater room. Then you are trying to manage a camera with an underwater housing banging into the bars. On my first dive this caused the underwater housing on my camera to flood - totally ruining one of my cameras. Fortunately, my more expensive camera was intact. However, since I had never used it underwater it took me all week to figure out how to properly use it. All these photos were taken on the last day.
Great white sharks have an undeserved fierce reputation. They slowly and tentatively cruise by the bait we put out, making several passes at it before they bite. And when they do it is not the explosion you see when they are after a sea lion - bursting out of the water. There were two times they crashed into the cage with a loud BANG! It was inadvertent as they tried to pull the bait off the line.
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| Just before crashing into the shark cage |
I concluded the a far more dangerous shark than the great white is the land shark: attorneys, MBA's and politicians. And we, as humans, are far more lethal to all sharks whose population has been decimated my us by 90% for tasteless soup served at Asian weddings, and shark meat passed off in butcher shops and markets as sword fish.
