We were picked up at 10:30 in the morning and shuttled over to Gansbaai (pronounced "haans-bye" with a little bit of phlegm-ness on the "haans" part) where sharks run rampant this time of year. It's winter and the water's pretty cold, but I guess that's the perfect condition for sharks to….you know.
Anway, the company we signed with, Marine Dynamics, is also a conservationist group that tags and monitors sharks so we sat through a few presentations about how they are mostly harmless but are still mistreated by fishermen everywhere. It was good information and I can't say that I didn't learn a thing or two. Little did we know we had a shark expert in our own group--Thanks to Shark Week, Jeff was spitting out facts like it was his day job.
After lunch we got on a boat to headed out to sea. So far, we've been on a couple of boats but none of them were as fast as this one. Most our trip consisted of us holding on the railings as is our lives depended on it, mainly because our lives really did depend on it. I made the mistake of taking out my camera before those rocket-jet engines fired up and was caught attempting to keep still with one hand and a pinky. I can't completely regret it though, I did manage to capture this:
This boat was cruising next to us at the same speed when a some sort of sea hawk flew next to us. One the crew on the other boat held up some meat and the bird flew over to grab it out of his hand.
And then another one came by and did the same thing!
When we arrived at the cages, the crew asked for the first group of six to get suited up. I would have been ticked if something cause the sharks to swim away later in the day so I volunteered our group first. Gabe and Jeff immediately sounded off a confident "NO!", but John was game. Armed with an underwater camera that I had been borrowing, I was able to snapped as many shots as I could while underwater. I ended up taking almost eight photos, and although a few of them are out-of-focus (listen, photographic composition was the last thing on my mind when some of the Great Whites were swimming right at me) I did manage to get a few decent ones. Check it:
The fish were everywhere. Like flies of the water, I had to swat some away when they got too close.
Look at the teeth...
There is something so intrinsically scary about seeing this come at you.
Probably the best picture out of the bunch. I really couldn't pay too much attention to the camera when a 15 foot fish with bear-trap jaws was within arms length.
The famous fin.
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