Part IX: Cage Diving

I awoke at 4:15 am.  Not a pretty time.  I usually see it from the other side of a day.  But the drive to Gainsbaii is several hours long and the hope was to be in the water by 7:30.  Most of us slept in the small bus.  And when we awoke once more, we were before a boat launch with a line of diving vessels waiting to dunk.

We breakfasted as  - Vian - our dive master explained some of the safety proceedures regarding getting into a cage with a Great White just outside the bars. 

(PS.  Vian seemed like a ridiculously appropriate name to me and I almost laughed when he said it.  The reason is because the name sounds very much like the French word for ‘meat’.  A shark-dive master whose name is meat…)

We loaded onto the diving boat and a tractor with enormous wheels towed us to the ramp.  Huge engines were motored into position and throttled up, pulling the boat off it’s trolley, out into the water.

We dropped anchor several miles off shore, several miles short of Dyer Island.  Two large Tuna heads were hooked and thrown over as bait.  It wasn’t long before the scent drifted out and attracted the first Great White shark I’ve ever seen.  She was a large female.  Gorgeous.

I was quick to get in the water.  Number 1 question since I’ve gotten back:  Weren’t you scared?  Helllls no.  I was giddy as a little boy.  Being so close to something so large and strong, something practically in perfect tune with it’s environment – an animal that has not needed to evolve further for millions of years.  I only see these creatures as magnificent.

Unfortunately Spielberg did us all a great disservice by engraving in our skulls the notion that sharks are blood thirsty eating machines that think only of killing.  Vending machines kill more people every year than White Sharks. 

Most people, in fact, survive shark attacks.  Why would this be if these animals were so hungry?  Well there’s a few reasons.  The most interesting one, I learned from Vian.  Sharks have a highly developed sense of taste, which goes beyond the normal concept of ‘taste’.  They have receptors in their mouths that allow them, with one taste to determine the fat:meat:bone ratio of any given food.  People generally survive attacks because the shark has a taste, realizes how low our meat to bone ratio is and looks for something else.  Why?  The shark doesn’t want to waste the time it would take to eat and more importantly digest us.  Now… as for someone who is severely over-weight…that person might taste a little different.  Sharks are highly sensitive to the amount of work required to survive, especially since they must constantly move – unlike lions that only move for about four hours a day.   A shark simply does not want to eat anything without a high yield.  It’s far more efficient to go find something else that’s tastier. 

Think of it this way:  We’ve all at one point been eating chicken wings and come across the one that sat in the deep fryer for one cycle too long.  It’s almost all bone and the meat that is still on it is tough skimpy.  How many of us have attempted one little bite and thought “screw this!”, then threw it in the pile of bones and went in for the next fat chicken wing?  For a shark, we humans are that puny over-cooked chicken wing.

Now, what about the really vicious fatal attacks?  Well, that’s usually a problem of territory.  If you’re surfing along above the water and suddenly lose your balance and fall off and you just happen to hit a shark…well chances are you’ve startled the shark and when it comes to the fight or flight mode, chances are the shark is going to fight.  It is a simple case of fish-out-of-water.. but in this case, person-in-water… or person not attuned to the environment they now find themselves.

Think of it this way.  Would anyone in their right mind put on a Yankee’s ballcap, go down to a bar in Southie Boston, cozy right up next to an Irish man watching the Red Sox losing and start talking about how awesome the Yankee’s are?  Dude is gonna to get a beatin’.

On the back of our diving boat a man sat churning a huge barrel of bloody water with a piece of wood.  He also had a small hand line that he was tossing over board and hauling back up.  Live bait cannot be used by law, but anything caught while out on the water may be used to help chum the water. 

He got a tug on his line and pulled up a baby smooth-hound shark.  Naturally I wanted to touch the live shark and asked if I could hold it.

The skin was incredibly smooth to run my hand along its body from head to tail.  But to stroke the skin in the opposite direction was impossible.  The scale skin gripped stronger than the coarsest sandpaper.

 The Smooth-Hound soon tired from lack of breathing and I tossed him back in the water.

My turn came up again and I got back in the cage.  These next few photos were taken by an impromptu friend who was not in the cage.  As you can make out, I was in the far left end of the cage.  I was very lucky.  Every time the shark banked away from the bait, she came right past my side of the cage.

See how close she came?  We were face to face.

I made the extravagant decision to buy an underwater camera and this was the only ‘ok’ photo I got out of it.  Unfortunately, at this time of year, visibility under water was absolutely terrible.  Luckily the sharks got very close and I got great views underwater.

I got out of the cage once more and couldn’t be more pleased.  The little boy in me was dumb with smiles, but what came next – these three pictures below - topped it all.

She partially breached going for the bait.  I watched – and luckily not through the camera.  I had the camera poised before my chest and just held the shutter button down as I watched.  One of the best things I’ve ever seen.

After that last spectacle, it was time to go.  We left the cage floating and turned back for land.

One last shot with Vian – the dive master - and myself.