Expedition to Dive with Great White Sharks by Daniel Scott

I am not by nature an adventurous person. I am sitting here at my desk in Bondi contemplating a rain-strewn winter’s day. I am wrapped in a balm of slightly cluttered suburban tranquility, and I like it that way. I like my routines. My lemon juice first thing in the morning. Squeezing the tea bag against the side of the mug for extra strength. Chopping banana into my cereal. Leaving the bed unmade till lunchtime. Leaving the day’s dishes till evening.

As I sit here, this very ordinary person that I am cannot for the life of him understand how or why I did it, what possessed me to join an expedition diving with Great White Sharks near the Neptune Islands, off South Australia. But, months ago, that’s exactly what I did.

Kerplonk. Legs splayed, I crashed into the cage, going down like a dropped bowling ball.

Numbing water stormed my heavy-duty wet suit. A frenzy of blue bubbles blurred my view. I bit tight on my mouthpiece. My laden weight-belt snapped at my hips.

My rubber-booted feet finally found the cage floor. Then they lost it again. My hands reached frantically for the side bars. The cage was swaying in the swell like a palm in a hurricane.

Smacked brutally by a surface breaker, I gasped, and seawater flooded my nose and throat. I thumbled for a metal edge and gripped it firmly. I tried to plant myself on the cage floor.

A raging pulse convulsed my body. My muscles constricted. My tongue thickened. The lank struts of the cage felt alarmingly flimsy.

For a second, the swirl diminished, clearing my mask, bringing new fear. Somewhere, unseen in the flaxen water nearby, were two 4.5 metre Great White Sharks.

Outside, now, the grey duvet of cloud is lightening slightly, the patchwork of orange rooves and green trees that map my view to the impassive Harbour Bridge beginning to brighten. I sip my second cup of filter coffee, my limit for the day. The reassuringly regular purr of the 389 bus drifts up my street. The phone rings. I don’t answer it.

Distracted, I tidy my notes, find among them that report I read before I joined the expedition. The one that gave me sleepless nights for two weeks. The one that had me hastily and not without a tinge of self-dramatisation make an informal will, witnessed by my flatmates:

“SHARK ATTACK REPORT by Marco Flagg. Location: Off Monterey, California, June 30th, 1995. At approx. 17.20 we started the second dive of the day...

After maybe two minutes and at a depth of about 50ft, I looked to my right and saw the massive pectoral fin attached to the end of a torpedo shaped body of a large fish. Somewhat stunned I quickly thought the animal matched the shape and size of a white shark.

“Maybe 15 to 20 seconds after the first sighting, I looked to my left and below and saw the massive, wide open, near circular, teeth lined mouth of an animal coming toward me.”

In the cage, I could hear only the sluice and swoosh of rushing and retreating water. The deathly clank of the cage against the boat. Anticipation stole my breath, sent my heart into a rampant beat. Still I saw nothing.

Instinctively I pulled my hands from the exposed cage bars. Peering down through its latticed sides I could just make out the sandy, weedy ocean floor, 20 metres below.

Then there it was, like an underwater jumbo jet, gliding upwards at me from 10 metres away. Fear swept up and down the piano keys of my spine. I dropped to my knees.

In Bondi, the front door bell goes. It’s the mailman with a parcel which wont fit in the box. I check my mail. Throw half of it away. I’m tempted by another coffee but I settle for water. I pick up that report again:

”I thought “Oh, Shit” and shortly (one second) thereafter felt a severe but dull pressure on my body. I do not recall being shaken by the animal nor taking any significant evasive or defensive action...

As soon as I realised I was free I thought ‘it did not bite very hard’. I tried to feel if my legs were still there, and they appeared to be.

Surfacing about twenty yards from the boat, I proceeded the rest of the way on the surface. I attempted to climb into the Zodiac with full dive gear without succeeding. I then jettisoned the weight belt and removed my tank. I climbed into the boat and, attempting to pull my gear in, I fell back into the water.”

The Great White was looming closer to the cage. It was enormous, perhaps thrice my 184cm frame and easily three times its girth. It was coming to look at me. Slow. Graceful as a shadow. I felt like I was strung up shivering in a butcher’s window. Behind bars I was the curiosity. From above, the boat crew were pulling the surface baits closer to the cage.

Level with my eye-line, two metres away, the sight of the shark now filled my mask. Its mouth opened in a trademark Great White grimace, I was staring straight at its ranks of unforgiving teeth. I felt engulfed by adrenalin. Bizarrely, I noted its imperfections: two front teeth missing, abrasions on its huge nose, damaged pectoral fin, and the irregular line where its grey upper half meets its cream underbelly. The only hint of evil was in the conjunction between its olive-black eye and jagged jaw-line. With a dismissive sweep of the tail it whooshed past, the cage rocking in its wake.

Then, off to my right around 10 metres, the shark bent, twisted and went volte-face on a sixpence, gathering speed as it cruised back toward me. On the surface near the top of the cage, the tasty tuna bait was bobbing eerily. I struggled to my feet. Now the shark passed closer, faster, almost brushing the cage.

Around and around me it went as if I was an ornament at the centre of a giant goldfish bowl, orbiting the cage once, twice, three times. My eyes followed it everywhere, riveted by its immutable expression, troubled only by the heave and shove of the ocean. I have never felt smaller or more awed in my life. This shark was seventy million years in the making.

In my Bondi street a small dog yaps. The white clouds continue to part, scraps of blue floating into view, the Opera House now visible through the haze. My stomach is calling for lunch. Marco Flagg’s report remains open on my desk:

“As fast as I could, I climbed back in. I had a dull pain in my gut, but thought there was probably no big loss of blood as I was still conscious. We proceeded to shore. I climbed out of the boat but then sat down because I felt weak. The ambulance arrived within a few minutes.

I sustained a cut wound of around 1.75 inches diameter on my left forearm (six stitches), with another 1 inch scrape mark. Another eight stitches were required for a cut wound on my left, upper leg. The third cut wound was on my left lower abdomen (two stitches). My injuries in this incident are very light.”

Then, suddenly, at the edge of my vision, I sensed commotion. I turned to view the full slanted body of the second 4.5 metre Great White bursting upward through the water. With its eyes closed, jaws wide apart and its entire armory exposed in a ghastly gummy smile, its head looked like a necklace of death. Two seconds later the necklace slammed shut around the tuna bait at the edge of the cage, the shark’s jaws sliding and swivelling, teeth and gums spilling out of its mouth with every bite, a shock wave of muscles rippling through its massive body, its tail slapping the surf furiously. My breath was stuck in my stomach, my limbs benumbed, my senses catapulted into a no-go area where terror meets exhilaration. Five seconds later the sharks snapped the line and with a final smack of the tail flew away. The cage was left shuddering and tilted back almost on its side.

“You did it, you dived with the Great White Sharks” said Rodney Fox as I clambered from the cage still quaking. Fox, probably the world’s most famous survivor of an attack by a Great White Shark, off South Australia in 1963, has been running such expeditions to study and photograph them almost ever since.

On the deck of the Falie, the 150ft ketch used by Fox for these six or nine day trips, I wrapped myself in a blanket, unable to believe what I’d just seen, just how close I’d got to this crucial key stone predator.

At my desk I put on a soothing CD, watch the scaps of blue become a sky and follow a delivery van weaving up my street. I take one final look at that chilling report:

“For my part, I will not be deterred from diving in these waters. Statistics show the probability of an attack on myself or anybody else to be extremely remote. Report by Marco Flagg. ”

I am not by nature an adventurous person. But diving with those beautiful creatures was a highlight of my life and I’m glad I did it.