Shark attacks bite back

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — They were big, though not nearly as big as what we divers had anticipated.

Nothing like the jaws that faced Chief Brody as he threw bits of bloodied fish over the side of his boat, the Orca, in the 1975 movie, "Jaws."

But then we saw the teeth.

When they lunged for the chum, or bait, their mouths opened really, really wide. Rows upon rows of giant white jagged teeth glared at us. Their huge, blank, black eyes rolled back in their heads.

It was awe-inspiring. It was exciting. It was petrifying. Adrenaline crept up my spine and churned in my belly every time a Great White cruised next to the cage which we divers were soon eye-to-eye with underwater.

Pulses quickened and hearts pounded, first in excitement and then in panic. The sharks were curious and quick, but also quick to lose interest.

The divers alternated between fascination, terror and thinking this was the coolest thing ever. Some couldn’t wait to get in the water. The enthusiasm of others waned the further we got from shore during a bumpy three-hour ride.

I had researched the safety of cage-diving before I signed up. Would the sharks associate me with the bits and pieces of chopped up fish, or chum, the tour operators sprinkled into the sea to get their attention? Would they try to barge in between the cage bars?

John McCosker, senior scientist and chair of the aquatic biology department at the California Academy of Sciences said there was no evidence that sharks associate chum with the contents of the shark cage.

“I think that’s giving them too much credit,” he said.

However, McCosker mentioned that chumming, or fishing with bait, is not allowed near shark-cage diving in California because some correlation exists between shark-cage diving that uses chumming and attacks on surfers and swimmers.

If shark attacks on people increase, he said, animosity toward sharks will increase, which makes conservation more difficult. Does he advise people to be more careful in the areas where shark cage diving is going on?

"Most certainly," McCosker said.

I looked down at the cage, peeking a mere foot above water. What if the one of the sharks breached, leaping out of the water and landing on top of the cage? Or worse, in it?

South Africa is famous for its breaching Great White sharks, who attack their prey by swimming underneath and then hurtling themselves from great depths through the water, toward the surface, and up under their prey, sending both predator and prey flying into the air.

In South Africa, Great-White shark attacks tend to ebb and flow with the tide of holiday beach-goers, regardless of the frequency of cage-diving.

“This time of year they can go in a meter of water,” explained Lyndie Harbenberg, an operator at Shark Diving Unlimited in Gansbaai, South Africa. “You can actually count the great whites in-between the holiday people.”

I started to waffle. I tried taking deep calming breaths, but my lungs quivered as I inhaled deeply. My stomach felt queasy, and I was pretty sure that it wasn’t just from the rocking boat. The wetsuit I put on was cold, clammy and not very reassuring.

But once I got in the water, I calmed down. A little.

I felt safe in the cage. Sort of. The boat bounced up and down on the surface of the choppy ocean, and the cage bounced, too. I was jostled by the waves, and my hands and feet were thrust through the bars.

Pure panic ensued as my heart dropped through the bottom of my stomach every time one of my limbs slipped through the bars of the cage into shark territory. That is, until the limb floated back in, still attached.

Once I was back in the boat, I wished I could have seen more sharks underwater. The sea was a little rough, and underwater visibility was murky.

“People who do it become great stewards, ambassadors and protectors of white sharks,” McCosker had told me earlier. There is little new that scientists can learn from cage diving with Great Whites, he explained.

“Now it’s just really for the ecotourism industry,” he said, that helps fund conservation efforts and gives governments, like South Africa, incentives to protect the sharks.

I was hooked. Being eye to eye with a Great White that thrashed on the surface of the water was unbelievable.

This report comes from a journalist in our Student Correspondent Corps, a GlobalPost project training the next generation of foreign correspondents while they study abroad.