Fuck Shark Week. I went Great White shark cage diving in South Africa. I was a foot away from a 5 meter Great White. Several times. It looked me in the eye.
I also learned that Shark Week can be pretty dangerous for the sharks. These boat operators go out there, and they are over-aggressive, and then the sharks get hurt. We saw all these sharks with scars on them from Shark Week filming. The company I went out cage diving with believed Shark Week actually bred fear in people, portrayed sharks as mindless killers, and made people less sympathetic to the fact they are, well, not, but also endangered.
They are not mindless, I can tell you. They circled the boat several times with us in the cage, eye-balling us, deciding what we were, or if we were interesting. We weren't. Then they'd scheme to get the bait, which will be pulled away from them, if possible, so they don't become dependent on it as a food source. But they're smart, and they'll come at it from the direction it gets pulled in, or come from straight below so we wouldn't see them until they'd gotten a good chunk in their teethy mouths.
Using a fake seal made out of carpet dragged behind the boat, we also got the sharks to breach. It was awesome. So whatever with your shark week. These are the actual photos from my trip. It was badass.
p.s. As we were in South Africa, we also saw lots of penguins, and loads of seals (obviously - you go shark cage diving around Seal Island, and the little ones play in the shallows, and it is cute as all fucking get out), and a group of Southern Right Whales came up to our boat and breached to check us out. The sharks skedaddled when the whales came around. So being big and gentle is actually pretty badass, too.
I always wanted to study sharks... Then a bunch of people got bitten the year before I went into honours and the arse fell out of the funding.
ReplyDeleteI love them, they're incredibly important, high-trophic predators and without them a large number of fisheries would be (and some already are) fucked.
Go you great big fishes, you.
Awesome! I love how the sharks ran from the Whales, too...
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of sad that the people trying to show them to others sometimes hurt them though. =/
photos = !!!
ReplyDeleteI just loathe when any wild animal, "dangerous" or not, get depicted as indiscriminantly vicious. Let's face it; all animals are "dangerous" in some contexts, such as when threatened. My husband works at a remote camp where bears will sometimes come inside buildings or trucks if the doors are left open. There are signs posted which say "We don't have a nuisance bear problem, we have a stupid human problem"!
ReplyDeleteoh man, those pictures are too cool, i'm so jealous. that sucks about shark week. i've never seen it, but i love nature shows and i'd like to think they do some good in that they give those of us who haven't had the opportunity to cage dive with great whites a slightly more tangible reason to care about protecting them. but if a show is abusing animals and fucking over local people and the environment and such then that's crap. i've heard you can free dive with great whites! i don't think i'd do it, but holy shit that's so cool! maybe if you move back to capetown i'll come visit and we can befriend sharks :).
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