Cage Match

We tried to resist the tempation of the Capetown tourist trap of diving with great white sharks, but how could we say no to danger, fear, questionable animal tourism practices or freezing ocean waters?

Capetown is perhaps the most reliable location in the world for seeing great white sharks. There's a large cape fur seal colony 40,000 strong sitting in shallow water just off the coast and the unique combination of their presence and the underwater topography creates an irresistible chum line known as Shark Alley. It is estimated that about 1,000 white sharks a year pass through the area, each staying for just a few days.

But all that really matters is that we decided to brave 54F waters, claustrophobia and fear of animals that eat people to jump into a little cage and get closer to some sharkies.

The cage is a little small and you have to stick your toes and fingers outside to hang on. After a while you realize that the water is really murky partly thanks to the chum you're swimming in.

The boat chums the water and throws big fishheads in to give the sharks something to focus on, but tries not to let the sharks eat any of the bait so they don't learn to associate the boats with feeding. So for a while we just watched the sharks swim up to the bait and then turn away as it was pulled from them.

But these guys are pretty quick and a couple were a bit fiesty and did manage to get teeth into the bait - and that made for some good times as the skipper and the shark fought over the bait.

We had two exciting close encounters while in the cage. The first one was a smaller shark that caught the bait and held on. He was right next to us thrashing around for a minute or so before he finally ran off with the fishhead:

The next fun one was a real excited shark lunging at the bait right next to us and gave the cage a hard enough whack with his tail to knock us down. The video is great - it shows nothing but the camera bouncing around in a sea of bubbles and foam.

At the end of the day, we saw around 6 different sharks ranging from little 8' juveniles to a couple 12'ers and one 13' male (all sizes according to our skipper). Swimming around us, they looked pretty big, but these were all still small compared to the 18 feet they can grow to.

And we still have all our fingers and toes.