Diving out of the cage with great white sharks, part 2

Soon after the first rays of sunshine touch the waters of Guadalupe Island, Mexico, the shark cages are lowered into the water.

Chum, chopped up fish parts and blood, begin to be tossed overboard.

It’s said a great white shark can smell a single drop of blood a football field away. No shark nearby can miss this.

As soon as sharks are sighted, cautiously swimming in slow circles, the divers get ready.

Guadalupe Island is called one of the best places in the world to see great white sharks because of the water visibility. At times the visibility is 80-100 feet.

An ambush predator by nature, researchers have found simple eye contact keeps the massive predators at bay.

“As long as you stand your ground and maintain eye contact you’ll see it coming toward us and it’ll just veer off,” Dr. Alex Antoniou, founder of Fins Attached, said.

Based out of Colorado Springs, Antoniou brings divers from the mountains for a view of the top of the food chain.

Four divers can fit in the cage as it is lowered to around 40 feet below the boat.

Antoniou and a safety diver descend down outside of the cage. Only one diver at a time is brought out of the cage.

“The primary reason that we get out of the cage is really to show the true nature of sharks and how we’re not on their food chain and how they really don’t bother us,” Antoniou said. “Bringing divers with us to experience firsthand the research that we’re involved in goes a long way in educating everyone because then they go back and educate their friends and family and hopefully start to change minds about the true nature of sharks.”

As I exit the cage I have with me only a GoPro camera and monopole. The safety diver is armed…with a broomstick.

“The broomstick is not for hurting him, it’s just to make a distance between you and the shark,” said Fernando, the safety diver.

For two days, sharks kept their distance, never venturing within a couple dozen yards.

“They’re really rather timid,” Antoniou said.

Nearing the end of my final dive in the water, slowly appearing out of the blue, a 16-foot male great white shark swims around the cage.

Quickly I follow Antoniou away from the cage and toward the shark, whom scientists named “Bruce.”

You are less focused on just how big the shark is. You are really just looking at how big his teeth are.

Bruce is unlike any other shark we encounter on this trip. His curiosity causes him to circle and swim within arm’s length. I don’t reach out and touch him; I am content with capturing the moment on camera.

It’s true. As hard as it was to not start swimming back toward the cage as quickly as my fins could carry me, by standing my ground and keeping eye contact, this animal the size of a pickup truck, veers away from me. I don’t remember blinking for the entire five minute encounter.

While I am focused on the sharks jaw, Antoniou and Fernando are constantly studying the shark’s body language.

“It was coming close to us but I didn’t see the fins come down, I didn’t see a hunching back, I didn’t see any jaw-gaping, which are threat displays,” Antoniou said. “Now I don’t want to mislead people to say that they’re not dangerous animals, that’s why you have to understand their behavior.”

But it was an encounter with a shark that ended like almost every other person has around the world every day.

“When you think about the millions of people that enter the ocean on a daily basis and when you think about less than a 100 shark attacks every year,” Antoniou said.

This experience was to show we’re not the ones that need protection. They are.