Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

Airjaws

Posted from Hermanus, South Africa at 7:48 am, September 4th, 2014

For those wondering if we had better luck with sharks today, twice a great white leaped out of the water and destroyed the dummy seal we were towing, so it was an all right day, to say the least. The first shark was totally airborne – tail completely out of the water – while a photo of the second is posted below in order to ensure you never go in the water again.

The cage diving was again slow – the other two boats both got good looks, but the sharks were ignoring our boat for some reason. We actually had the opportunity to get in the cage this time, and we got a couple of passes from big sharks, but there weren’t enough sharks staying around for everyone in the boat to get a chance to sit in a flimsy cage in freezing water with a massive predator swimming a few feet away. GoPro video will have to follow in a future post as I haven’t had time to look and see what I got, much less edit it down to just include the parts with a massively scary shark in them.

After a morning of watching sharks fly through the air we headed east and spent the night in Hermanus, a seaside town known for having a huge concentration of right whales viewable from its shores. That said, as I write this at sunrise from the B&B’s balcony overlooking the sea, the whales are being shy, although I’m told they also swim into the old harbor so we’ll give that a look after breakfast before we meander further along the coast to see what we find.

Great white shark in False Bay

Bad day to be a seal decoy.

Great white shark in False Bay

(Update) I originally put only one picture on this journal entry, which Audrey pointed out is a crazy thing to do when there are multiple shots available of a great white flying through the air like a superhero. So here’s another one, for anyone who was still on the fence about ever swimming in the ocean again.

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