Lions, sharks, and lager - part 2

...continued from part 1

Once in the water though, all fear is immediately replaced by wonder. You are surrounded by sharks – beneath you, above you, beside you, between your legs, over your shoulder, and constantly haunting your peripheral vision. These are blacktips and bronze whalers – sleek torpedos of muscle sculling past looking for the source of that delicious fish smell. They regard your figure with passing curiosity – you are simply another large predator that has turned up for dinner. If sharks had eyebrows – and I’m fairly confident they don’t – they would raise one laconically at you as they pass. It’s as if they are saying, “I’m large with teeth, you are large with big metallic bubbly stuff going on. Let’s just all play nicely together and there won’t be any trouble, will there?”

Not a terribly scientific viewpoint I know, but that’s certainly what I thought they were saying. Glance downwards and you could just glimpse the sea floor sculling past beneath. Rocks and sand patches hurtled past as your drifting form rode the conveyor belt of the current. In this first dive we were in the water for 80 minutes and drifted six kilometres, flying over the reef and through the territories of what Mark called ‘his girls’ – the big tigers who call this reef their home. Of them we saw not even a vague shadow – we were too many, going too fast, making too many bubbles, and generally creating mayhem. I can only begin to imagine the signals we must have been giving out as we hove into view – a mass of divers and sharks thundering in from open water like a colliery brass band. The tigers took one look and – I imagine – went off somewhere quiet.

And so the week unfolded – dawn starts, white knuckles, big surf, spouting humpbacks, and lurking bull sharks (thrilling shadows in the distance, all muscle, testosterone and quiet intent). The team was magnificent, diving with great control, mutual support, and more than a little courage. Mad-haired, crazy-eyed and salt-encrusted, we flew north to Pretoria. Here, the beer belly of South African rugby, we watched the British Lions succumb in the very last minute to the Springboks, and decided that this was definitely a diving tour – had been all along, actually. Our next stop was Cape Town, for an appointment with the most remarkable, extraordinary moment I have ever witnessed. It’s an image seared on my retina and stamped indelibly on my brain. A split second I shall never forget, something to take to my grave, still shaking my head in wonder.

Having dived in the cages off Dyer Island, watching that great, noble, menacing animal that is the great white appear out of the murk to engulf a bait and part a rope with one contemptuous shake of the head, we retired to False Bay. Here, or so Reon assured me, we would see great whites breach, bursting through the surface to take seals in an explosive ambush. I wasn’t overly optimistic – I’d seen it on the tele, and they have to wait for ages to get the photos, don’t they? Weeks and weeks. The sun was just warming the horizon as we motored out to Seal Island, a big lump of smelly, noisy, writhing rock. Moving closer, we could make out the individual shapes of the seals, waddling and barking in the dim light of dawn, preparing to run the gauntlet of their worst nightmare, as death sculled back and forth in the deep channel that led to the open sea before them.

There is a critical moment, a witching hour when the light is just right. It means that the sharks can make out the seals as they head to sea to begin their day hunting, and yet the sun is too low to penetrate the water and the seals can’t see the sharks. Since time immemorial this has been the hour when the sea churns and writhes, when the game of cat and mouse is at its height. It’s the hour when violent, sudden death comes to the weak and unwary. The boat skipper tied a nervous-looking seal-shaped lure to a piece of rope, and let it out over the stern. There it skipped and danced on the wavelets of the wake, slewing from side to side, for all the world a naive young seal making its initial foray into deep water. We stood silently bunched on the stern, cameras pressed to straining eyeballs, fingers trembling over shutters, reverentially waiting for what none of us thought we would see. And then, an explosion. An irresistible depth charge of gristle, muscle, pounding tail and white teeth.

The shark hit the lure with such force its body was launched entirely through the surface, hanging suspended, supported only by glinting, slender pillars of spray. Shutters clicked, motordrives whirred, and I’d got it, a perfect shot. The photo of my life. Nature red in tooth and claw centrally framed in the screen, the mountains of the Cape glowing in the background. A photo to retire on. A photo to justify the trip, the expense of the camera, the dawn start, and the endless hours taking rubbish photos that have been my photographic career to date. I deleted it about ten minutes later by accident. I don’t want to talk about it. 

The British Lions duly thumped the Springboks in the last test match, which was splendid because we all decided it was a rugby tour again, and drank the commensurate amount of beer on that – our final – night. Memories of South Africa? The wonderful, carnival atmosphere around the rugby matches. The Springbok supporters were a credit to their team and their country – passionate, vocal, but full of hospitality and friendship. Team member Tammy writing rather rude comments on my forehead in permanent marker one drunken evening, and then telling me so I had just enough time to go and wash it off (I have a memory like an elephant, Tammy, revenge will be served cold and oh so sweet). The glorious, twisting, shapes of the various species of sharks that surrounded us as we were carried swiftly along by the Agulhas Current down the coast of the Dark Continent. A great team, a great country, and a great time among friends. And finally that huge body twisting in flight, with so much power even the sea couldn’t contain it. Just don’t mention the photograph…