Guest comment: “Absolutely excellent. I’m so glad I chose this company. The whole package from the pick up to the breakfast, snacks, help on board, lovely staff, soup and sandwiches and dry wetsuits…Amazing experience!” – Rebecca
“Amazing trip! The staff were amazing, answered all our questions and were very helpful! Appreciate the research work you’re doing!” – Erik + Anne-Marie
“Thanks! A once in a lifetime experience! Everyone was great!” – Hillery
18/03/2015
Location: Joubertsdam
Water Temperature: 12.6’C + 13.7’C + 14.4’C
Depth: 11.2m + 10.9m + 10.5m
Visibility: 0.5m + 1.0m + 1.5m
Number of Sharks: 5 + 5 + 7
Conditions: Overcast skies with increasing winds and swell.
We had an early start this morning and because of the low tides we had to launch from Gansbaai Harbour. While this is approximately a 20 minutes longer journey to our dive site it is also a very interesting one with views of the abalone farms, Danger Point and its light house and also the chance to see some wildlife including a variety of sea birds and seals! Once in the shallows we noticed that visibility was going to be an issue this morning and the sharks were going to be very hard to spot. There was a brief glimpse of a shark very soon after arrival, swimming by the left side of the cage however it wasn’t till 1 hour and 20 minutes into our trip that a shark was seen by all. This was a nice sized sub-adult that came and went from our view for the next hour before a 4.2m female known as “Ingrid” came into view. “Ingrid” stayed with us for the rest of the trip, and could be seen circling the boat at a distance, her dorsal fin breaking the surface every now and again. This is not the behaviour we are used to from “Ingrid” around the boat as she is usually quite active and can be seen close to the cage and boat. We had two smaller individuals come by without causing too much excitement as they came and left and it wasn’t till our fifth and final shark of the first trip arrived that things got heated. “Rosie” showed up in the nick of time to save the day and continued to do as she has done in previous days and steal the show and those on board’s hearts! She was even nice enough to stick around and be the first shark to show up for the second trip of the day. This trip was off to a flying start, and continued in such a fashion with four out of the five sharks being above the 3.5m length. The activity seen in this trip slowed down towards the end however on the positive side of things the visibility had increased significantly in such a short time that viewing the sharks had become a lot more enjoyable. The third and final trip of the day was lucky enough to see the visibility continue to increase along with the temperature a little. We did have an half an hour wait for our sharks to turn up but it was none other than “Rosie” yet again closely followed by a tad smaller male with parasites trailing from the distal edge of its dorsal fin and around its gill slits. We had a few others around for this trip some new for the day others we had seen on previous trips this morning, yet “Rosie” continued to be the star attraction and was responsibility for some brag worthy photographs and whoops and yells that could be heard on board and in the cage! Its days like these that make you truly appreciate the White Shark…
If you are looking to get up close and personal with the great white shark then 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.
