Great White Shark Feeding

Tuesday, Oct 19 in Mossel Bay Area  South Africa

Time to head out on the boat... Zip-on / Zip-off Legs are nice!

We took a chance on booking this adventure... they had not seen sharks for 7 days, but had been advised by the scientists who have helicopters that they had moved to a specific bay.  So they felt good about going out to find them.  I'm thinking we have been pretty lucky so far with the many things we are seeing, so I was thinking positive we would find the sharks.

They drove the boat to the area they thought the sharks were and anchored sideways in the current, which created an extremely rocky situation. You had to hang on ALL THE TIME!!! ...and could barely do that.  We had 8 in our group and 3 of them got nauseated.  Dennis and I were fine.

Ready to See the Sharks!

They began scooping chum into the water which consisted of tuna scraps and the key to the chum was the oily substance that floated on top and drifted.  Tuna is on their diet.  Sharks favorite is whale and seal meat, but they are not allowed to use those two as bait.  So our wait began...

Maybe after an hour, we finally had our first sighting, yeah for finding sharks!  The water was very clear so you could see it swimming around scoping things out.  They had a rope with big fish tied on it and used that as a bait to get them closer to the shark cage and boat so we could really see them.  They would throw it out in the water and just when the shark was ready to grab it, they would yank it up or in, it would keep the shark coming back.

He's scoping it out

Going for the kill

Sometimes he got it...

Sometimes the guide would jerk it away

Typical shark fins on top... and here is cage against the boat

Three people in the group got on wetsuits and got in the shark cage.  Another girl chickened out and one other guy had gotten sick.  The cage was tied to the side of the boat and with a mask you just held your breath and went underwater to see them.  While I was not afraid of being in the cage, I did not want any part of the freezing water -- with or without wetsuit!  The guide told us we actually see more from the boat anyway.

The guide said we had a total of four different sharks that came for viewing.  We had two students on the boat as well and they were charting information as to what sharks, water temp, etc.  I could tell some of them apart myself.

It was interesting as one shark was there and headed for the bait and all of a sudden he seemed spooked and darted away from the bait.  Then in seconds, another huge shark appeared.  I guess the big one ruled!  Dennis thinks he was probably 18 feet in length.

While we saw lots of sharks and got some pretty good pics, there was one time that neither Dennis or I were ready and a shark came from the deep straight up out of the water and grabbed for the bait.  His mouth was wide open and head was out of the water, but we didn't get the picture. :-(   we saw it though!

Most of the sharks would swim around at the surface before attacking, but every now and then they would come straight up from the deep and it's not as easy to spot them until bam... there they are.

So, it was a fun afternoon and seeing them in the open ocean was great.  But, I'm not kidding when I say the boat was rocking, to the point I thought it was literally going to tip over -- I could SEE US being the shark bait!!

It was very difficult to hold the camera with one hand and hang on for dear life with the other.  We were on the top viewing deck, so we had more movement than on bottom deck.  Just when you would aim the camera to click the wave would take your view to another place -- this really was difficult for picture taking.  Ashley, I held on to the camera no matter what though!