Welcome to Day 19 of the A-Z Blogging Challenge. My theme
is:
'Wildlife Encounters'
Here is an edited extract from one of my South African articles which was published in a
newspaper in Spain titled 'Facing Fear'. I subsequently wrote a fictional version of this experience which was published on the Cafe Lit Website titled 'Shark Bait'.
Off the coast of Walker Bay, Dyer Island is home to a colony
of Cape Fur Seals and the strip of water between the mainland and the island is
called Shark Alley.
Our boat was small and the one person cage looked puny, but we were assured that the sharks never attack the cage. It’s the bait they’re interested in, not canned diver.
We lurched out into the choppy water. Eventually the anchor
was lowered and the boat sat bucking and bouncing like it was struggling to
break free.
Frankie and his crew got to work with tuna bait and a seal
decoy. They lowered the cage into the water.
We suited up.
We suited up.
We waited.
An immense shadowy figure began to circle us. Abruptly it
lunged for the bait which Frankie tweaked away to encourage it to stay on the
surface and fight for its meal. Spooked, it vanished instead. Another came to
investigate the bait.
It was time to go shark cage diving.
I plopped into the bobbing cage, gasping from the freezing
water. Unthinking, I hooked my toes through a lower rail in the cage for
balance.
Tension mounted as I waited in the water for a Great White Shark.
Suddenly I realised where my toes were and with a little
spurt of fear, jerked them to safety.
After a body numbing aeon, the shout came, ‘Dive down!’
I dropped underwater and there I was, eyeball to eyeball
with a Great White Shark.
This beautiful animal, shimmering and sleek as it sliced through the water inches from the cage made me forget where I was until I realised I needed to breathe.
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| Great White Shark, South Africa |
In the years I have been scuba diving I have had numerous shark encounters. Despite the bad press, sharks are not scary or dangerous to divers underwater. Shark attacks occur when an animal mistakes a human for prey – all too often it’s surfers who come under attack because the shark thinks the surfer is a seal.
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| Nurse Shark, Maldives |
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| Grey Reef Shark, Fiji |
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| Scalloped Hammerhead, Fiji |
Oh, yes – and please, please boycott all restaurants which serve shark fin soup so that these animals will finally stop being slaughtered before it is too late!
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| Great White Shark, South Africa |
See you tomorrow – I’m heading north east. Can you guess where and what the next animal will be?
If you want to blog-hop to the next A-Z Challenge blog, please click HERE
