Guest comments: “One life time experience, great organized, lots of learnings! Big thank you!” – Gerome
“Fantastic tour. Have left humbled and more educated.” – Gustav
“Great experience! Good soup!” – Jesus + Rosa + Alicia
11/07/2018
Location: Joubertsdam
Water Temperature: 15.3°C + 15.4°C
Depth: 8.5 m + 9.2 m
Visibility: 3 m + 2.5 m
White Sharks Seen: 2 + 3
Conditions: Some clouds overhead, minimal swell with a breeze.
With a storm coming through tomorrow, we launched this morning with our hopes high that we would be able to see some sharks before we wouldn’t be able to go to sea for a couple of days. Luck was on our side! With a quick 10 minute wait before we had our first shark, we knew it was going to be a great day in the bay. Our first shark was a 2.6 meter male that we’ve been seeing frequently. His behaviour changes throughout each trip. Sometimes he likes to sneak up on the seal decoy and bait line; sometimes he likes to swim deep in front of the cage, down near our divers feet, and sometimes he likes to sneak up from under the cage, investigate the decoy and bait, then dive back down under the cage disappearing beneath the boat. We had another shark around as well, about 3.3 meters long with some healing wounds along its side. This shark had a tendency to stay deep as well, moving quickly around the boat. Activity was good throughout the trip, with all of our divers getting a second chance to dive! Most of our divers also got to see 2 short-tailed stingrays swimming in front of the cage, and one cage got to witness a Cape cormorant hunting the mullet around the cage. What a treat!
As we boarded Slashfin for the second trip of the day, we were excited to get out to our dive site! With all of Slashfin’s power, we made it out there in just 15 minutes and got ourselves ready to go cage diving! With the cage secured to the side of the boat, we had a shark pretty quickly this afternoon. Our first shark was the 3m male that we’ve been seeing over the last few days. He cruised around Slashfin with some grace this afternoon, giving our divers some nice opportunities to grab some underwater footage of the mighty individual. Soon after this we had our second shark of the trip another 3m male with the bite mark just below the dorsal fin. While he was swimming a little deeper today the extra meter of visibility allowed us to track him through the water. After this guy moved on we had a little lull in shark activity, yet we had a very active cape cormorant around the cage. This energetic guy was schooling the mullet in an attempt to catch an unlucky fish. As our guests became transfixed on the swirling school of mullet the shark that came from the bow of the boat caught us all by surprise. The role of the cormorant almost went from predator to prey as the shark stalked the unsuspecting bird at the surface! This or 3rd shark of the day was the same larger 3.6m male from the 1st trip! He eventually left the bird alone and gave us some nice strikes on the decoy line!
If you are looking to get up close and personal with the great white shark then Great White Shark Diving in South Africa, and more specifically with Marine Dynamics, is a once-in-a-lifetime experience you won’t want to miss. Book and pay online with us and get a free video of your encounter with the world’s apex predator.
