We Love Sharks!

You should know that there are people in this world who's whole job is making documentaries. Not just any documentaries but documentaries about sharks. Yes, they get paid to film sharks. These people are jerks. Why, because I am not one of them, that's why.

Watching great white sharks breach is an activity I never tire of. Inspired by shark week, I thought I would post some of our past experiences with our large fishy friends.

Several years ago, Candice and I were lucky enough to explore Southern Africa. I was by far the best trip we have ever or will ever go on (for oh so many reasons). One of the highlights was going to this little fishing village called Hermanus and from there, to Gansbaii to cage dive with the great whites, which we did a few times. It wasn't scary or adrenaline inducing at all. Mostly, it was a privilege to see these rare and beautiful creatures up close. They are incredibly powerful. Occasionally, the sharks would slam the cage as they devoured huge hunks of fish, that the crew used as bait. You got the feeling that if you were being attacked, you would be rag dolled and helpless. Good times. Mostly, the sharks seemed curious of humans but didn't seem to want to eat us or maybe they did, I'm still not clear.

I don't swear too often but at one point while I was filming, our boat hit some big waves. Candice, in a poor attempt to balance herself almost pushed me overboard while a large female with a killer smile was swimming underneath the boat. Yeah, there was swearing involved.

Here is a video that captures a little bit of our experiences. The quality kinda sucks but you get the idea. Also, you should know that there is a flute solo in the vid. A serious flute cameo. There was nothing I could do.

You can see me briefly reach my hand out of the cage to touch one of the shark's fins. In the video, it's right after one of sharks puts it's head against the cage (1:10). As the shark turned away, I couldn't control myself. Have you touched a living great white? I didn't think so. Having touched one of man's greatest fears, I felt more or less bad ass. Interrupting my moment of triumph, one of crew asked me not to do that again while he showed me his hand that was conspicuously missing a finger. No lie.

Another sweet experience we had was swimming sans cage with whale sharks in Mexico. Whale sharks being the biggest fish in the world are gentle and majestic. We were lucky enough to swim up to them and basically ride them. Yeah, it was incredible. I still remember it's jet like gills pulsing as it took us for a ride. When I first dove in, I didn't know that a whale shark was about 3 ft. from my legs, coming at me. It was scary but luckily my ninja swimming skills kicked in and I evaded the giant with ease. Or it moved itself from crushing/eating me. I'll let you decide.

I managed to take a pic, not 3 feet away. It was freaky but when am I going to be able to take a pic in front of a whale shark again? Sorry, these pics suck as they are the fruit of our very expensive, disposable 1987 camera.

In the high quality image above, you can see how massive that Leviathan really was. That's Candice swimming on the other side of the dorsal fin.

You can kinda see it's cute quasi anime face in these pics. Riding whale sharks is a special experience not to be missed.

Finally, we dove with captured sharks at Denver's aquarium. They have a decent variety of sand tigers, browns, bamboo and these sweet sharks with saws for noses. There are times that I wish I had a saw for a nose, just sometimes.

Finally, there was the cage diving done in Hawaii several posts ago. Save the sharks and the planet.