White Shark Diving in South Africa –
Something you have to do!!
 Everybody
is, anxiously watching the small round float with a piece of bait that
is pulled past the cage – just out of reach of one of the most gracious
animals you’ll ever see. The Great White Shark!! The most feared
predator on earth.
Spend a day with South African based Marine Dynamics and Andre Hartman
on their boat “Shark Fever” and your life will never be the
same again. They will show you a side of this incredible animal that you
could never have imagined.
Not a man-eating monster that ramps boats and hunts people diving, but
an animal perfectly in tune with nature for the last 7 million years. An
animal that has been hunted and feared for all the wrong reasons, an animal
that you will respect for the rest off your life.
André Hartman and Marine Dynamics have been at the forefront of
diving with Great White Sharks in South Africa for the last 10 years. Many
famous marine photographers and filmmakers have worked with them over the
last decade – a decade in which they have learnt more about these
magnificent animals than all the previous years.
All this is happening at a magical place called “Shark Alley”,
a 150  metre stretch
of water between Dyer Island and Geyser Rock – two small Islands
70 kilometres from the Southern most tip of Africa. Gansbaai a fishing
village about 170 kilometres from Cape Town is the nearest town to Dyer
Island (An easy 2 hour drive, on good roads). The Island is also known
for its penguin and other bird colonies. Geyser Rock is home to a colony
of about 60,000 Cape fur seals that attracts Great White Sharks all year
round.
The operators make use of fish products to attract sharks to the boat.
Operators never feed the sharks – an important part of their code
of conduct. Over the last 8 years close to 1000 different Great White Sharks
have been identified moving through the area. Each shark’s dorsal
fin differs from the other so these are used for photo identification.
Marine Dynamics main aim is to give you a better understanding of the
very fragile ecosystem in which they operate and to be a voice for the
Great White Sharks as well as sharks in general.
Close to 100 million sharks are slaughtered in our oceans every year,
most of these sharks are finned and thrown back into the sea alive. Marine
Dynamics encourages people not to use Shark products and wherever possible
oppose and educate those who do. Marine Dynamics is not only involved in
educational programmes for school children but also started a “Dyer
Island Conservation Trust” which will help to care for all the animals
in the sea.
Links:
www.sharkwatchsouthafrica.com
MARINE DYNAMICS
www.whitesharktrust.org
WHITE SHARK TRUST
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