predation!

yesterday i went shark cage diving with nicole and pujita. i promised mom i wouldn't tell her about it until after i did it, so this is my confession.

we got picked up at 4:30 in the morning (i woke up at 3:45 am... ouch) and drove two hours to the city of gansbaai, which is the apparent great white shark capital of the world; it claims to have the highest concentration of great white sharks in the world. we had breakfast, and then got on a boat along with about a dozen other people. the sun was rising over the harbor, and it was beautiful.

after about ten minutes we reached dyer island, also known as seal island, which is the location they filmed at for the planet earth series. the seals who live on seal island have to swim through a narrow channel each day to go out to find food, and the clever sharks use this to their advantage and hang out near the area to catch seals.

on the way out, we caught sight of a whale blowing through his blowhole, which was pretty awesome. once we got to our location, almost immediately we saw what the workers on the boat called "predation" : a little ways in front of our boat, we could see the thrashing of a shark as it attacked, and presumably ate, a seal. it was insane.

the boat crew continuously dumped nasty fish juices off the side of the boat and dangled dead fish off the end of a rope to attract the sharks. the visibility in the water wasn't great, so we could see more sharks from the boat. we even saw a shark breaching, its huge toothy mouth coming up to try to eat the fish. 

despite the fact that the air and water were freezing, i squeezed myself into a wetsuit and went into the cage that was attached to the side of the boat. i saw two sharks come literally right up to the cage, about two feet from my face; it was incredible.

i think great white sharks get a bad rap, because for all the terror that is associated with them, they really just swam up next to the bait and left as quickly as they came. they didn't "attack," they weren't angry. they just wanted to check out what was going on. it was so awesome to be out on that boat and try to comprehend what was underneath and around us.