Great White Shark Cage Diving!

Day 4, Part 1. In the morning we were picked up by a cool driver with an awesome Jack Russell Terrier that sat on the dash of the van, and went nuts about an wroght iron cut-out of a cat standing on a building along the way - no one pointed it out to him either - so funny!

Nick's in a know-it-all mode this morning. He's explaining to us how it's going to be.

Yep, I'm still sick. But the malaria pill is wearing off, and I'm getting better.

A short ride towards those mountains.

The sea gulls were fishing too.

He came up empty.

This is the cage we were in. Down below the surface a couple feet is a slit about 10 inches tall where you can get a good view or hang out your appedages to taunt the sharks.

shark bait.

Fish in the water.

The guy in the forground is our leader guy. Seemed quite knowledgeable about sharks, did everything but guarentee us we'd see them.

Ahhhhh!!! shark attack!

When we were in the cage, we were honestly too excited to actually look thru the viewfinder at the sharks - we had to see it for ourselves. So that's why these pictures aren't framed well.

Those are some nice teeth, eh?

The fish were attracted to all the brine floating in the water. But they would dissapear when a shark was near.

Incoming

Shark thrashing the bait. At one point a shark bit the rope in half, taking the bait and float, and never giving it back. So we had to stop while they found another float and rigged it up again.

See the shadow?

Most of the sharks were not that huge, but one of them was definately man-eater size.

chomp!

A big boy.

Check out those eyes.

Can I pet it?

These people are researchers. They're tracking sharks to determine wether great whites are squatters or migratory. It turns out that the sharks are pretty much almost always migratory. They can ID a shark by scars and tail and so on.

This guy found his perch.

He wishes he was a bald eagle.

They threw some stuff in the water.

Shark!!!! This is a pretty good sized one. I was in the first group to get in the cage (only a few would volunteer to go first) so we didn't get to see this guy until later.