It was a slow start to the week on the shark front due to bad weather. Much to my delight White Shark Diving Company had a fantastic back-up itinerary to ease with my shark withdrawals.
On Monday we spent the morning at Betty’s Bay hanging out with the penguins. The night we had a braai (bbq) with the volunteers from another cage diving operator. Tuesday was our data day. We set out one day per week to analyse a range of data we’ve collected over the previous week – photos of great white dorsal fins and measurements of smaller sharks we’d tagged on fishing or snorkeling trips.
On Wednesday we had an adrenaline fueled afternoon fat biking with Dave at Fat Bike Tours South Africa. Bombing down the sand dunes of De Kelders on 4 inch wheels was a definite highlight of my entire time in South Africa so far. Thursday we went shore fishing at Danger Point and it was so much fun (and wet)! Finally on Friday we were back on the ocean. It was a fantastic day and the shark activity more than made up for the previous 4 days on land.
This is the day I laid my eyes on my favourite great white – an enormous 3.8m female with an even bigger personality. I’ve named her Doris because she’s as far from a sweet old lady as you can get! You might think great whites are all the same but when you spend a bit of time with them you see they actually have very different personalities and behaviours. This girl is the Beyonce of the white shark world – confident, strong, fearless. What a beast!
On Saturday we had an incredibly successful shark tagging trip. We caught and tagged 16 – a mix of smooth hounds, leopard catsharks and Puffadder shysharks. It was an epic trip topped off with a visit from a great white and freshly caught fish for dinner.
You simply can’t pay for that kind of experience.
- By Laura Wozniak
- Photography by Laura Wozniak
Full Blog at Diary of a shark girl – week 2