Cue Jaws Theme Music: Shark Cage Diving!

What started as an early morning turned into a spectacular day with Great White Sharks!
I was picked up here at the res at 6:40 this morning for a two hour drive out to Kleinbaai; a small town east of Cape Town on the coast, famous for its Great White Shark tours and home of White Shark Projects, the company that runs the tour I went on that also does conservation work and research on Great Whites. The scenery out was lovely, and the breakfast included in our day, as well as the coffee, was greatly appreciated.
There were forty people total in the group: a mixture of International study abroad kids like myself from UCT; other Americans on vacation; and a family of Germans (who were really hard-core and brought their own gear with them! I had no idea that diving was popular in Germany...?). Once briefed, we were escorted down to the waterfront to board the boat and head out towards the infamous Shark Alley. Two small islands off the coast--Dyer Island and Geyser Rock--attract the sharks due to the Cape-fur seals that live there. The smell of the seals was awful, but their romping in the water was pretty cute. They don't stray too far from the safety of the rocks unless they have to feed though.
The boat passed safely by the rocks and we set anchor with the side of the boat into the wind so that the chum, or dead fish soup, would float away from the boat to attract the sharks. It's actually illegal to feed the sharks, so what the crew does is throw the chum into the water and use a piece of tuna tied to a rope and a wood and foam seal decoy to get the sharks close to the boat and the cage for optimal viewing. The crew then lowered the cage into the water, which is attached to the side of the boat at all times and allows viewers to hold their heads above water while the lookout keeps an eye out for sharks. When he spots one coming, he directs the divers to look and everyone dives under, keeping all appendages within the bars of course. While the dive suits are thick, that water temperature was about 14 degrees Celsius, so it's pretty freaking cold, but once the first shark appears you really don't pay attention to the water temp. Within minutes of anchoring and setting the cage, the first shark appeared, and divers were settled into the cage. Even from the deck of the boat you can get a good view of the animals: their dark tops are hard to see in the water, but the white undersides and sometimes scars make them distinguishable from the water. At first they just sort of circled around the boat (I say they because by the end of the afternoon we had THREE sharks making passes at the bait, and at times two of them would try for the same piece of fish at the same time: it was so cool!) but soon they were really going after the bait and especially the decoy: at times their heads even came out of the water! None of them breached like you see on the Discovery channel though, but it was awesome nonetheless.
When I actually got into the water I was so excited and cold that I wasn't really scared at all, which was surprising. I went half-sies on an underwater camera with another guy on the tour, so he took the pictures while we saw two different sharks making passes at the bait. One seemed smaller (I say this with a sense of irony: all Great Whites are huge) and had several deep scars on his head, making him easily recognizable from the others, but the second shark that glided past seemed almost as large as the eight person cage we were in. His whole body was an enormous grey barrel, and he even gave us a Jaws profile, coming up from below almost perpendicular to us to try and sneak up on the bait. I can only hope that when the pictures get developed we were able to capture at least some of the cool shots from the two trips we made into the water (I mean, how can you only do it once?!)
The sharks were literally close enough to touch at points, and it was absolutely amazing being in their environment with them. As much as people are so afraid of them and make them into such monsters, I was just enthralled by how graceful and beautiful they were.
This experience was definitely worth it, and hopefully if you have the chance to get to South Africa you take the opportunity to try something like this. You might even find that facing something so fearful could really be one of the most incredible events of your life!

PS though: bring some Dramamine or something, 'cause even when they say the water's "as calm as a lake," you're going to feel nauseous by the end of the day. I swear my chair is rocking right now and it's not a rocking chair :/