I've always been fascinated by sharks. My fiancée and I went to South Africa in August of 2006 to see the great whites. We did two trips out of two different locations.
Our first trip went out of Simon's Town, which is just outside of Cape Town. The charter went to Seal Island in False Bay, which is famous for the breaching great whites. We went with Rob Lawrence of African Shark Eco-Charters. He was extremely knowledgeable, he's been on several "Shark Week" episodes. I highly recommend Rob. He takes a small boat which is nice because he takes a small group. It was almost like getting our own personal tour, there was only one other person on the charter with us. Unfortunately we didn't see ANY action, no breaching, no great whites, nothing. Talk about a MAJOR bummer. There had been a big storm while we were there, it had been such a big storm that Rob recommended that we wait a few days to do the trip because he felt that we wouldn't see any action due to the poor visibility. He said that the storm had brought up too much sand and the sharks would probably have trouble seeing the seals. We waited and two days later we finally went out because we were leaving Cape Town soon to go on a safari. We spent the 8 hours watching and following fur seals and pulling the seal decoy, but didn't see a single great white. He apologized and only charged us for the gas. He told us we would take us out the next day but couldn't guarantee that we'd have better luck. We didn't want to take a chance at not seeing any great whites while in South Africa, so we decided to do our next trip out of Gansbaai.
Gansbaai is about a 2-hour drive east of Cape Town. The great whites don't really breach much out there but we still had the chance to get in the cage and see them up close. We went with Shark Lady Adventures. Shark Lady took us out on a much bigger boat with a much bigger group. There were about 15 of us, big difference. This time we saw great whites. We were able to get in the cage, 4 people at a time. Once everyone got in the cage once were allowed to go in again. The water was pretty cold, about 55 degrees, so most people couldn't go in for more than 5 or 10 minutes. My fiancée only went in once for about 10 minutes, she doesn't do too well with the cold. I on the other hand have no problem adjusting to cold, and I was so excited to see great whites that I didn't even notice the cold water. I spent the most time in the cage of anybody on the boat. It was absolutely amazing to see 15-foot great whites face-to-face. The crew would chum the water to bring the sharks around, we saw about6 or seven great whites. Then they would tie a rope through a tuna head and us it as bait. They would throw it about 10 feet in front of the cage, then when the shark would swim towards the tuna the crew member would pull the rope towards the cage. So the sharks would usually swim right past the cage, usually within less than 6-inches of the cage. A few times a shark would swim directly towards the cage, and at the last possible second turn inches away from our faces. It was soooo unbelievably awesome, words can't describe the feeling of watching a 15-foot great white swimming directly at you. The sharks rarely caught a hold of the bait, but in one instance, while I was in the cage, a shark caught the bait and started to thrash with it. In all of the thrashing the shark bumped the cage pretty hard, so hard in fact that the cage and boat both were jarred pretty good. My fiancée was not in the cage and was watching and video taping from the deck of the boat, and she said that the boat shook pretty rough from the bump. It was really really cool. The only problem was that we had to cut our charter short because two young women on the charter did not take any motion sickness pills and got sea sick. So even though we still had bait left and the great whites were still game, we had to go back to shore. We gave the rest of our bait to another tour operator that was staying for the fun.
We had a few glithces, but it was still such an amazing experience, and worth every penny. The whole trip cost just under $3500, which included roundtrip airfare for the US, about 3 flights within Africa, hotel with made-to-order breakfast in gorgeous Cape Town and Johannesburg, 3 days in a beautiful resort in Zambia near Victoria Falls, and 4 days of safari in Kruger National Park. We were there for about 2 weeks. I'm not positve but I think the cost of the shark charters cost about $300 USD.
One of the best trips of my life so far, along with Galapagos, and Australia. If you're a shark lover, I highly recommend great white cage diving at least once in your life.
I'll try to put the underwater video I took on YouTube and link it in the next couple of days.
It was filmed in SA and I guess it's about the same guy on the website-link in a previous message. Would love to see them upclose, only prob is that SA is not around the corner...:smurf:
