Would you scuba dive shark infested water in South Africa WITHOUT a cage?

Shark diving in South Africa is something I was super keen to tick off my bucket list as part of my recent trip there.

 

Diving Shark Infested Waters WITHOUT A Cage In South Africa

First off though let me just put your mind at rest – that title was pretty click bait heavy! 

The waters aren’t INFESTED with sharks – we just happened to be diving a spot with a healthy population of sharks, known as Aliwal shoal.

In fact Aliwal Shoal is one of the top dives sites in South Africa, largely due to the abundance of Oceanic Black Tip Sharks and also in the season, Tiger Sharks.

I’m also massively biased – I love sharks, I honestly think they’re beautiful, misunderstood creatures and I relish the chance to interact with them in the wild and I’ve had some incredible scuba dives with sharks across the world.

From leopard sharks in Byron Bay to nurse sharks in the Maldives – these creatures fascinate me and I’m also keen to drag along some buddies to convince them sharks are something to be mesmerised by, not feared!

So I was stoked to join the crew of Aliwal Dive Centre for one of their famed shark dives – where you’ll be joined by up to 40 oceanic black tips and occasionally tiger sharks too.

Honestly it was incredible – so check out my full video edit below, but also take the time to read the rest of this post too, because sharks really aren’t what the media portray them as…

 

 

Save The Sharks

Did you know that over 100 million sharks are killed by humans each year?

100 MILLION.

Let that number sink in.

That’s over 270,000 A DAY!

Or 11,400 AN HOUR!

Shark fin soup, by-catch from unsustainable fishing (at this point all fishing is pretty unsustainable), long line fishing and game fishing are absolutely decimating the population and people don’t seem to care because they’re not cute and fluffy like pandas

Well after spending an hour diving with these gorgeous Oceanic Blacktip sharks in South Africa with the crew of Aliwal Dive Centre I can say I was truly humbled and mesmerised all over again

These aren’t man eaters and yes I know I’ve played on the stereotype slightly with the soundtrack of this edit (watch it with the volume turned up!) but I hope that gets it more attention and more people read this caption as a result

 

Is It A Baited Dive?

Full disclosure, this was a baited dive and honestly I’m still unsure how I feel about that.

The sharks are resident to the area, but the dive doesn’t feed them anything more than a few scraps, merely attract them to a certain spot.

At the moment my thoughts are that if an interaction with thee creatures helps convince people to spread the shark love then that’s pretty positive.

Another positive is that the people in the area now realise that these sharks are worth more alive than dead, something that sadly hasn’t spread to other parts of the world as over 100,0000 sharks are killed each year for the shark fin industry.

Either way it was an incredible opportunity to get up close to them and I felt truly humbled to be in their presence.

Yes they were big and yes they did get all up in my personal space, but it was a dive that make me excited not scared – so if you get the chance to spend some time with them and shark dive in South Africa it come highly recommended!

 

Have you ever been scuba diving with sharks?

How was your experience?