Would you dare to be submerged in ice-cold waters, waiting for a shark to come and bare its teeth for a mouthful? I don’t expect you to be the bait, rather you will be encased inside a ten-foot-long aluminum cage, dangled off the side of a dive boat.
That is the scenario in case you are planning to go on a commercial cave diving trip! The water is freezing and the visibility not very superb. Besides, you get to see the shark up close only if you are lucky, you might not be able to stay in the freezing waters for that long! For jumping into the cave, they attach lead to your wet suit to counter the natural buoyancy.
In the last 15 years, ‘cage diving’ has gone commercial. Thousands of tourists a year are now squeezing into wet suits and plunging into shark-infested waters off Australia and South Africa for an intimate look at the predators, which grow as long as 25 feet, can weigh more than a ton, and live between 30 and 50 years. Dyer Island is the only place in the world where shark viewing takes place the whole year round.
Great whites, or carcharadon carcharias, are among the world’s most nomadic creatures, one was recently tracked from South Africa to western Australia and back over a period of nine months, a distance of 12,000 miles which means that they are almost impossible to keep alive in captivity. (Rare exceptions have been young white sharks kept for short periods at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif., before being released into the wild.)
If you are interested in cage diving get in touch with White Shark Projects, White Shark Lodge, 16 Geelbek Street, Kleinbaai; (27-28) 384-1774 or (27-76) 245-5880, bookings@whitesharkprojects.co.za or
White Shark Diving Company, Kleinbaai; (27-82) 559-6858 or (27-21) 671-4777, or info@sharkcagediving.co.za
Source: The New York Times
