Truly the definition of A W E S O M E!!!!! Here is the full story from Cyrille, I got chills just watching/reading about it!! Full story of Saturday No-cage shark dive: -------------------------------------------------------------- All was set up for another great day of diving the Infidel wreck and get more net out of it. After 2 years of effort, the last few months have been very successful, to a point that more marine life is being witnessed on this wreck, with lobsters, nudibranches and a wolf eel ! So in addition to the net cutting mission, which is very demanding in physical effort at that depth (150ft), we also decided to have 1 dive of documentation, trying to get good still pictures and video of the new critters. The visibility wasn’t too good on that first dive, and we had to put a line from the mooring to the wreck. There was a lots of silt, but it was possible to circle the wreck and get some video footage of the marine life. After 30min of bottom time we headed back to the line, and just when we were leaving the wreck, Landyn saw the massive animal swimming around, probably 30-40ft from us. He flashed his light and I looked back. What an excitement. The dream of every scuba diver coming true. It is so rare. That would make it a day and let us forget the poor visibility. We looked at the great white female shark heading toward us thinking she would not be staying for long, and we’d have been super happy with just a glimpse of her anyway. But just at the point we were reaching the ascent line, she started to swim toward us, getting closer and closer. Still under excitement, we set up for the ascent, but getting closer to each other than usual, and looking at the shark carefully. We started the ascent very slowly (slower than usual), and she was following us, circling around with smaller and smaller circle. The attitude was not aggressive at all, she was certainly curious about the bubbles makers, and probably also wondering why these 2 sea-lion wanabees were so slow and carrying so much gear! At that point, we had switched off our lights, and the concern was increasing a notch. Why is she staying !? We’ve been dreaming of this experience, we’ve been telling people that GWS were not attacking divers, nor even human – only by mistakes when they are mistaken as sea lions or seals, which clearly we were not. Still, without shark real experience, it is difficult to fight centuries of human fear of ‘THE GWS’, hearing the JAWs theme in a corner of your head, and forgetting about all negative media coverage on sharks attacks, whatever the reasons. So there was for sure a minute and a half where we were not too brave, under 130-140ft of water, knowing that we had 30min of deco in front of us and a 18ft shark getting closer and closer! At one point, she came really close, maybe within a meter or less, and I put my camera in front of me by instinct for protection, in a way I consequently missed some outstanding footage… It would have been a shame she would have bit it (maybe I would have run after her to get the SD card back), but it would have been better than my buddy’s fin! After that intense moment, we relaxed a little bit. Obviously, she was just checking us out, her approach and attitude were slow and again not aggressive. When we reached 110ft, we met the second team on their descent, using scooter. At this point she probably got scared and left all of us. We continued the ascent, hitting the 20ft stop final deco for 15min, where some concerns kicked in again, as we could picture her coming back from the deep! We probably used a bit more gas than usual during this ascent, but looking back, I think we stayed pretty calm from the outside. Maybe like her: she was also very calm, but with a lot of questions inside her head! Maybe she wanted us to remove the long and large fishing line she had on her mouth ? In any case, it was a totally awesome dive, and having real life unexpected experience with the such a wonderful animal is extremely rewarding. Put of lots of things in perspective, and the fact she was mouth-hooked with this line confirmed further that the net cleaning activities we are doing is necessary and that people should be more cautious about how they treat the Ocean and perceive marine ecosystems. It is interesting to try to remember all what went through in your head in these moments. Was I really scared? Probably at some point, but for some reasons, the excitement was always stronger. I was constantly looking at her (missing some good footage), both to check the situation and in a survey-mode, but also completely attracted by the animal sight and fully absorbed by the experience. There was a point where some ‘we are not going to make it’ thinking was floating around, but maybe more created by the chill of the encounter, as for some reasons, I always knew I’d be able to share the experience to everyone ! So maybe the centuries of human consciousness on sharks is actually evolving positively! By the way, we went back for dive 2 after 2 hours surface internal, no problem! And we’ll continue getting to the wreck to finish up the cleaning. And I hope we’ll see her again swimming around! - Cryille Rio
Posted on: Thu, 28 Aug 2014 17:02:41 +0000
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