Underwater Adventures #2 - Shaaaaaark!

Just when you think it's safe to get back in the water..........dun dun, dun dun...........

Inspired by watching Jaws on TV last night (for about the 100th time, I love that film and how about the contra-zoom when Brodie's sitting on the beach with his wife behind him - Spielberg calssic) I thought I'd share some more of my underwater antics. 

South African waters are fairly well known for being quite 'sharky'. We're one of the few countries that have an extensive Great White Shark population and people travel from around the world to go cage diving with them. What's probably less well known is there's also the opportunity to dive with sharks with no cage. 

Protea Banks is one of the places where brave souls can literally jump into shark infested waters........just for fun. Although the chance of shark encounters when diving is high, the operators in the area organise baited dives to attract the most number of sharks for the divers. 

I'd been diving and filming on Protea Banks on and off for a couple of years (check out Underwater Adventures # 1 if you missed my intro to one of my best dives ever) and was pretty comfortable in the water with these magnificent creatures. 

I know most of us have been led to believe they're viscous killers but the reality is very different. But on this dive I will be the first to admit my heart was racing just a little.

I'd been filming around the bait drum (a fibreglass 'ball' drilled with holes and filled with smelly fish about 8m below the surface and used to attract sharks) for about an hour when I started getting cold as decided to head to the surface. As I swam closer to the boat I heard a scream from Tristan the surface support diver. He was pointing frantically below us and I turned to look and there it was. A 4m tiger shark swimming right towards us. 

Like any well trained camera operator I hit record and watched as this huge shark swam straight for the buoy the bait drum was hanging from and decided to check it out! Unlike us touchy feely humans, sharks don't have hands so tend to use their mouths to check out what things are and this one was only interested in the big red float on the surface. 

I have to say the wide angle lens on the camera makes the shark look a little farther away than she really was and Tristan and had to tuck our legs and fins in as tight as we could to clear a path for our surprise visitor. 

In less than a minute our encounter was over and the majestic tiger of the ocean swan back to the depths of the ocean leaving us a memorable encounter and all fingers and toes intact!

#teamsouthafrica

!steemitworldmap -30.827299 lat 30.489204 long Protea Banks - Shark Diving South Africa D3SCR