Swimming with sharks in Port Lincoln: A great white adventure

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 9 years ago

Swimming with sharks in Port Lincoln: A great white adventure

By Sue Williams
Great white sharks are still protected species

Great white sharks are still protected species

How does it feel to have a great white shark look you right in the eye from just half a metre away in the middle of a lonely ocean?

Even worse, he has blood over his lips and the remainders of his last meal still stuck between his teeth. And now he's eyeing you with real interest.

I can tell you exactly how that feels: terrifying.

Loading

It doesn't matter that there are metal bars between you and those ghastly pointed teeth that you know are razor sharp, designed to pierce prey and shake them, while taking them down, down, deeper and down to a certain, and ghastly, death.

Suddenly, the space between those bars looks immense and the words of the captain of your boat that you shouldn't worry if he thrusts his head right in, as there isn't enough room for him to open his mouth properly and take you alive, sound ... nowhere near as comforting as they did on the surface.

So we just stare at each other, the shark and I, me with the hair on the back of my neck rigid, fear coursing through my body, and each breath from the gas tank coming in short, sharp, rasps. He looks nonplussed, idly wondering, no doubt, how much effort it would require to peel me out of the wetsuit to reach the tasty morsel inside. The moment feels as though it lasts hours.

Fishing boats in a marina.

Fishing boats in a marina.

Finally, he ducks down and swims beneath me, only to reappear on my right side. I turn to face him. He then swims around to my left. He's around four metres long; an absolute giant. He stares some more and I try hard not to start hyperventilating. And then, at last, with a disdainful flick of his tail, he's gone, off into the pale-blue yonder. I breathe freely once again.

Advertisement

Cage-diving with great white sharks in the Southern Ocean off South Australia's Port Lincoln isn't really for the faint-hearted but it does seem to be on many people's bucket lists.

"Nah, you're not a true Orrstrayleean if you've never wanted to swim with sharks," says one boofy West Australian on the same boat. "And let me tell you, this is a bloody sight safer than swimming in the sea where I live!"

Our captain, Rodney Fox, laughs to hear it. After all, he knows intimately how dangerous great whites – the world's largest known underwater predator at up to six metres long and weighing up to three tonnes – can be in the deep. It's 50 years since he was attacked by a great white while taking part in a spear-fishing championship along the South Australian coast and endured the worst shark savaging anyone's ever survived, ending up with 462 stitches in his chest and shoulder, broken ribs and a punctured lung.

But in some ways, it feels like only yesterday. "I did see my life flash before me," he says. "At one point, when the shark was dragging me down, I thought I was finished ..."

Nowadays, Rodney, 73, stays a safe distance from them running Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions, and entertaining customers on board the Princess II with the story of his life, while his eldest son Andrew, 48, talks about – surprisingly perhaps – the beauty of the creatures and the need to protect and preserve them.

Rodney also invented the prototype shark cage that we've just clambered into after being kitted out with wetsuits, breathing apparatus and weights. The cage, with three of us in at a time, is then winched down from his boat to beneath the waves, some bloody sets of tuna guts are chucked out to tempt the sharks over and then the underwater show begins.

Although it is frightening to stare down a great white, all of us get back in for a second go, and some for a third.

By the time we take a side-trip to one of the craggy Neptune Islands nearby, 30 kilometres off the Cape Catastrophe mainland, and are warned to back off if a giant seal approaches because it might be dangerous in its zeal to protect its cubs, virtually nothing can daunt us.

We, you see, have swum with sharks, and lived.

TRIP NOTES

GETTING THERE

Regional Express (REX) flies from Adelaide to Port Lincoln five times daily on weekdays. See rex.com.au

SEE + DO

Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions runs two, three, four and five-night adventures for people who want to do everything from watch sharks from the boat and stare them down from the cage, to deep-sea dive in a cage on the ocean floor. It costs from $995 for two nights, and includes a bed in a twin cabin with ensuite onboard the Princess II, all food and soft drinks. Phone Ph (08) 8363 1788, see rodneyfox.com.au.

Take seasickness pills before the journey out.

The writer was a guest of the South Australian Tourism Commission.

Sign up for the Traveller Deals newsletter

Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.

Most viewed on Traveller

Loading