Rough Seas and Big Sharks....

Set out for doing some cage diving with the Great Whites today. The shuttle showed up 35 minutes late, and I started to get that feeling of dread again. Last time my shuttle was late, there was a bomb scare on my plane, it was delayed for 20+ hours, and I had to spend the night in a hotel. As today I was dealing with sharks, I didn't really want bad things to be happening off the get go.

It was about a 2 hour drive to where we were going, a small town close to Dyer Island, which has Geyser Rock beside it, forming a channel in between. This channel is known as 'Shark Alley' due to the fact it has the densest population of Great White Sharks known in the world. That and the fact that Dyer Island is teeming with seals. The Great Whites come there to mainly pick off the pups that haven't learned about sharks yet.
We set out into huge swell in the ocean, about 20-30 foot, and the boat was thrashing all over the place. It was the first time they had been out in three days due to the terrible weather and I could see why. The tour company had taken over for another and was running one boat for 2 companies, as the previous month, the one company's boat had flipped due to a rogue wave that the captain didn't see in time, and couldn't turn into it fast enough. Not what you'd want in shark infested waters!

It took about 25 minutes to get out to where we wanted to be, right at the mouth of the channel, on the south side. It wasn't long before there were people throwing up everywhere. I quite enjoyed the show, as did most people that weren't bracing themselves on the railing, bent forward, giving their morning offerings to the Ocean.

I was one of the first ones into the cage on the side of the boat, after sliding into a thick 7 mm wetsuit. They give you a mask and a weight belt, and you just have to throw yourself down in the cage to get underwater, due to the heavy buoyancy of the wetsuit. They also have a seal decoy, which is simply a piece of wood cut out in the shape of a seal, and they toss in some fish on a rope as well, all the while chumming out the back of the boat with fish oils to attract the sharks. Recipe for success.

It wasn't long before the sharks came around. There were 5 of us thrashing about in the cage due to the waves, and the real danger seemed more from flying elbows than from the sharks outside. I was in the water for about 40 minutes, and had 2-3 large sharks come by. None came as close as I had hoped, staying about 10 feet out. One guy to my left decided to get sick inside the cage, and for a little while, we had the pleasure of floating around in his breakfast, but it soon washed away. After a while, we were asked to get out of the cage for another group, and I reluctantly left. However, due to the swaying and thrashing in the cage, I wasn't feeling very good at that point either.

I got out, dried off, and went to change. All was okay, until I decided to hop down into the little washroom to throw on some pants. That took a while, getting tossed around inside, and I found out quickly that small spaces and nausea from sea sickness don't go well.

I promptly got sick all over the side of the boat.

Most of it went in the Ocean, a little on the deck, but I wasn't too concerned.

After that, I must say, I was feeling tip-top, so I went back to looking at the sharks and taking pictures. Many, many more came around, and some were absolutely huge. One male was very aggressive on both the bait and the decoy, actually coming out of the water a bit. At one point, he did a small leap, and crashed into the side of the cage, much to the delight of the people inside. The shark flipped upside down, and they pushed it away with a stick, but it continued to hang around trying to get the bait. The second group and the third group definitely got the best viewings out of all of us.

After all that, there was a little more throwing up by a few, but we made our way back into Port. The swell had dropped, so it wasn't as rough, and before long we were on dry land again. Great time!