Luckily, the weather remained beautiful, consistent with the past two weeks, and the sunrise over the water was gorgeous. We drove around a huggeee school of dolphins (over 100) all jumping out of the water eating sardines - sadly, the lighting wasn't great and none of my attempts at pictures came out but, you get the idea.
False Bay is the only location on the globe where you can see sharks breaching, a hunting technique used while preying on seals in which a shark jumps completely out of the water. June, July, and August are the prime viewing time as baby seals are finally old enough to join the older seals to hunt for food rather than relying on their mothers. Unfortunately, these babies tend to have trouble keeping up with the pack which make them perfect targets for the great whites. While breaching, sharks swim on the bottom of the bay and then shoot up, at speeds reaching 40mph, to grab a seal, launching themselves up to 10ft in the air!
Our expectations of actually seeing this natural predation occur were not high, understandably, but we were blown away. We saw four "natural" predations - the shark only managed to catch seals two of those times (think lots of blood and seal guts) but the launch out of the water was quite impressive. Next, the operators tied a black wetsuit to a rope and pulled it along behind our boat as a decoy. Twice a shark tried to attack the decoy - shooting up SO close to our boat. It was incredible.
[I, sadly, did not take these pictures - the boat operator, African Shark Eco Tours, did - my poor little camera was always just a little too late so I ended up with many pictures of huge splashes.]
Finally, it was time for the cage which was connected to the side of the boat. Kirsten and I pulled on wetsuits, complete with booties and hats, tied weight belts around our stomachs to hold us down, and jumped in. The cage had a bar on the bottom to stand on and one inside to grip; air was provided through a scuba tank to allow divers to stay under water for optimal viewing. [The water was freezing and actually took my breath away when I first jumped in but we both got used to it quickly.] The operators threw out two decoys - one wetsuit type fish and a big dead half of a fish with blood to attract sharks. The water was actually pretty murky so we seemed to be staring out at nothing and then all of a sudden a HUGE shark was right in front of our face. I really can't put this experience into words and pictures don't seem to do it justice but we both grabbed each others hand, held on tightly to the cage, and screamed into our scuba mouthpieces (or in my case, laughed hysterically). We were only in the water for 10 minutes or so (we figured that was plenttttyy of time), but at one point, the decoy was right in front of the cage and the shark lunged, open mouthed, at the decoy... needless to say, we got a very up close and personal view of the inside of that great white's mouth. My heart starts beating faster just thinking about it.
[The cage, before it was lowered into the water and moved to the side of the boat.]
[Kirsten and I are in the cage, the yellow ball is attached to the decoy, and, obviously, the shark is super close. We didn't take a camera in the water with us and initially regretted it, but in hindsight, I'm not sure how well the pictures would have turned out due to the murkiness of the water plus we likely would have been too terrified to even consider taking pictures.]
The experience is definitely at the top of my "coolest things to do in life" list and I highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good adrenaline rush.
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