Africa Day 7: Simons Town

We had a long day on Day 6, but it was all travel. Three hour drive to Durban, two hour flight to Cape Town, and a half hour drive to St. James where we checked in to Blue on Blue, a nice B&B tucked up on the hillside above False Bay. We had beautiful views from our room and were within walking distance of the beach and the restaurants that lined it. Even though it was winter, there was quite a bit of car and foot traffic along the main drag that paralleled the coastline.


Day 7 was to be a long day and, to continue the theme, an exciting one geared toward viewing large animals. This time though, they were aquatic animals and apex predators...yes, we were going to try to see great white sharks. Unfortunately this meant we'd have to wake up before dawn yet again. We were met by our driver a the B&B at 6am. With a sunrise at 7am, our boat launched--shark cage lashed down on the back of the boat--at 6:40 so we could hit the waters around Seal Island right at sunrise, the prime feeding time for great whites. There were 16 of us on the boat including the captain and three crew members.

The day began with all of us on board on the lookout for what the crew termed "natural predation". This was the part where we observed great whites feeding on their prey, the thousands of seals that inhabit Seal Island. The seals would head out to open sea to find food and then have to return across the dangerous waters that made them prey for the sharks. Sunrise was the prime feeding time because it was still too dark for there to be much visibility in the water so the seals could not see sharks below, but the light sky allowed the sharks to see the seals quite well.

It didn't take long for the captain to yell out "predation" and we all rushed to one side of the boat as the captain tried to get us in closer for a view. We were told to watch the gulls above since they followed the action, hoping for scraps. Typically there was a first hit and then either the seal was able to escape, or there was more thrashing, and occasionally a blood slick in the water. For the first few incidents, we saw nothing more than a dorsal fin here or a tail fin there, but before long we had seen some breaches, sharks emerging from the water as they first hit the seal. The folks on our boat broke into two teams: Team Shark, rooting for the predators, and Team Seal, screaming with fervor for each seal to escape the clutches of a shark.

It was a very active day for feeding, according to our captain. Hopefully this would translate to significant activity for our late morning activity which was jumping into the shark cage to see the sharks face to face. We witnessed, in all roughly 20 predations, some more visible and frantic than others. It was difficult to capture good images or video since, as previously mentioned, the first hit on the seal was typically the most aggressive and occasionally resulted in the shark breaching the surface. But we saw some amazing athletic feats by the sharks and got at least one rather impressive series of images and good video during one particularly lengthy bout between shark and seal.

After the natural predations, the captain had the crew lower a decoy "seal" into the water and he towed the decoy around the island for about 15-20 minutes. We then returned to make another pass, but before they could let the decoy more than 30 feet from the boat, a great white leap out of the water and came splashing back down. Dave was one of the few on the boat lucky enough to witness this, but no one had their cameras or video ready since we hadn't really starting towing the decoy yet.

Shortly thereafter, the crew lashed the shark cage to the side of the boat and they began chumming in the water and dropped two "bait" lines into the water, one at the surface and one about 10 feet down. The first pair of divers readied themselves, climbing into their wetsuits. It took a little while, but we eventually saw a shadow passing the stern of the boat. The crew hustled the divers into the cage. This process continued and every once in a while, one of the sharks would attack the surface bait and we'd get a show.

Then it was our turn to get in the cage. We suited up, lowered ourselves into the cages, and grabbed the regulators from the crew. It didn't take long until the first shark passed in front of the cage. Not too close, but certainly close enough to give us a great view. Then a few minutes later, another pass from the other direction. And finally, our closest encounter came when a much larger shark took the bait that hung below the surface and passed under the cage within a few feet of our feet. Awesome.

Despite our viewings, we were told that it was a slow day in the cage and the sharks were a bit shy; there were no face-to-face encounters in the cage. But that didn't detract from our experience.