Long feared as crazed, cold-blooded killers, white sharks are proving our first impressions very wrong. Cameron Ewart-Smith looked behind the hoopla, while cage-diving in the unlikely boom town of Gansbaai on the southern Cape coast, and discovered a majestic animal in critical need of some good press.
You are a thousand times more likely to die hanging your Christmas lights than to be attacked by a great white shark. Even dogs - our best friend - killed more people worldwide last year than have been killed by all species of sharks in the past hundred. With approximately 150 scalps a year, coconuts are positively bloodthirsty by comparison.
Even so, as a journalist entering the shark-infested waters off Dyer Island, near Gansbaai at the southeastern point of Walker Bay (close to where the Birkenhead went down), I was particularly anxious. If there's one group of people sharks should be peeved at, it's us. No other group has spread more falsehoods and hyperbole than the media... with the possible exception of Hollywood directors that is. If sharks were Americans they'd sue... and if I were a movie director I'd be safely ensconced somewhere high and dry in the Sahara.
Anxiety soon fled, however, as Brian McFarlane helped me and underwater photographer Geoff Spiby into the metal cage bobbing on the surface next to Predator II, the 12-metre catamaran he uses to take tourists shark-cage diving. He asked us to leave the scuba rigs on board and breathe using only our snorkels, as the mechanical sounds made by demand valves tend to scare the sharks - that's right, I said scare the sharks.
Unfortunately it was summer, not the best season for cage diving, but as we slipped into the cage the signs we'd have a good encounter were promising - a five-and-a-half metre female was mooching around. Let me say it again in case you glossed over that statistic... FIVE-AND-A-HALF METRES - bigger and heavier than a long-wheelbase bakkie.
As we submerged, peeping out from the bars and holding our breaths, the shark appeared out of the gloom. Passing within touching distance she glided by effortlessly, propelled by imperceptible movements of her tail. It looked almost artificial … as if she were a model toy driven by a little engine. The eyes were not those of a puppet, however. They were alive, assessing us, unfamiliar visitors to her aquatic realm.Read More
Gansbaai Accommodation
