Fish Are Friends
Cage Diving.
Bluff, New Zealand.
Shark Experience - Bluff, New Zealand.
I arrived at Bluff Lodge the night previous, as the cage dive started early morning.
After some ‘interesting’ hostel stays, I was a little apprehensive about staying in a dorm full of people. However, both dorms were completely empty so I had a choice of 18 beds.
I had planned on having an early night, but I ended up going out with Jack and Devon, a couple I had met in Australia, to watch the aurora. They were also at Bluff Lodge but staying in a campervan outside.
The aurora was hard to see with the naked eye, but our cameras could just about capture the greens and purples peeking through the clouds.
The next day was a 6:15AM start, followed by a shower and breakfast. The lodge is located on the same road as the Shark Experience reception/shop, so getting there for 6:45AM was easy. Shark Experience New Zealand
Once all the paperwork had been signed, we were offered a choice.
Great White Sharks had not been seen in the area for three weeks, so Shark Experience offered a 365 day ‘No Shark Sighted Policy’. This is where you can return and have another go if you do not see any sharks, at no extra cost. This is normally the whole procedure. Sharks are wild and if they are all no shows, then that is just bad luck. You can’t control nature and if you could it wouldn’t be as impressive.
No sightings for three weeks is very unusual and we were offered to have a full refund before the trip. A few people on tight schedules, who would not be able to return within that 365 day period, did weigh up the options for a few minutes. In the end the possibility of missing out on seeing a Great White proved to be too tempting, and everyone did decide to embark on the adventure.
The crew were a good laugh, they took us through the safety procedures and how to use the equipment on the way to the location, which took about an hour. We had picked a good day for it. The ocean was like a lake, which was lucky for me. I had taken Devon’s motion sickness tablets, my motion sickness chews and had sickness bands on my wrists in preparation. I didn’t need another Kaikoura incident.
We were actually joined by some Albatross along the way.
I wasn't feeling 100%, so to avoid getting in the way of others, I decided to prepare myself at my own pace. Ironically, I kept standing in the way. I was the first to receive a wetsuit, gloves, boots and a mask. I got suited and booted and then allowed everyone else to queue in front of me until I felt perfect. So, I’m still not sure how I ended up being the first one in the water.
I put the weighted vest on with some assistance and went down the ladder into the cage. This was just a test run. We were to go into the cage with the oxygen chord, perform some exercises, and then change over. The exercises were, getting stable in the cage, taking your breather out underwater and clearing your mask of water. I finished the exercises and was just surfacing when our guide poked her head out of the water and shouted “SHARK!”. I put my breather back in and climbed down the ladder.
In front of me was a Great White Shark… I still find it hard to express what it was like. I was so caught up in the moment that I couldn't remember anything else, it felt like I was the only one there with the shark. With the goggles on and my floating body, it felt like I had been transported into a VR video game.
What motion sickness? The top of the shark was glistening with yellow lightning from the sunlight, refracting in the water. Totally speechless. Sadly, my moment had to end as they had to go through the exercises with everyone else on the boat.
The cage holds five people, but during this process only two people could be down with the instructor at a time. I was not bothered by this, I was completely absorbed in the feeling of excitement and exhilaration.
The build up made the moment even more exciting for me, from being offered a refund and informed that no sharks had been seen for three weeks, to seeing one within a minute of being underwater. It was beyond my expectations and it was too much for me to handle. So if you want a really good time, get the crew to tell you there are no Whites in the area.
It took a while for me to get back in the water as everyone needed to go through the exercises, and quite rightly, people who had not seen the shark got the opportunity to dive first. I had been quite vocal about seeing the shark, so I would have been fooling no one by saying I hadn’t. I was also still on cloud 9 so was quite happy to wait my turn.
With 5 people able to go in at a time the rotation actually worked really well. People were able to stay in the water as long as they wanted. Jack was in the cage for at least 30 minutes waiting for someone to tap his shoulder to get him to come out, apparently oblivious to the cold. With the exception of Jack Frost, the water being 14°C helped get people out of the water fairly quickly.
Often on these tours the worry you pay all this money, and you’ll only get 20 mins of the experience and then your time is up.
I got over an hour of being under the water with the sharks and could have been in longer.
At least three great whites turned up. One shark bit the side of the cage, another tried to catch a Northern Giant Petrel that was chilling on the surface of the water. I managed to get some decent GoPro videos and pictures from the boat as they stayed around all day, approximately 10:00AM-15:00PM.
Lunch was served and there was plenty of it. On a few trips I have been on, non vegetarians had eaten all the vegetarian options, so I have been left to watch them eat the meat after they have eaten my food. I learnt my lesson, so I was one of the first to tuck in, but there was plenty of food available.
On the way back we saw some seals, blue penguins and even got some acrobatic bottlenose dolphins surfing in the wake of the boat.
It was honestly one of the best things I have done in my life and I would happily do it over and over. Jack and Devon were also on the same page and later that day we all couldn’t stop talking about it. We couldn’t stop talking about it when we met up in Queenstown a few days later.
Absolutely Awesome.
