Swimming with sharks inside Cape Town’s Camp Wallaby

 
David Pocock Roar Rookie

By , 7 Aug 2009 David Pocock is a Roar Rookie

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Australian rugby union backs Quade Cooper, Adam Ashley-Cooper, James O'Connor, Matt Giteau and Drew Mitchell remove the tape they used to prepare themselves to take on the forwards during a practice session in Sydney on Thursday, July 23, 2009. The Wallabies next match will be against South Africa in Cape Town on August 8. AAP Image/Paul Miller

Australian rugby union backs Quade Cooper, Adam Ashley-Cooper, James O'Connor, Matt Giteau and Drew Mitchell remove the tape they used to prepare themselves to take on the forwards during a practice session in Sydney on Thursday, July 23, 2009. The Wallabies next match will be against South Africa in Cape Town on August 8. AAP Image/Paul Miller

Cape Town, what a place! Africa’s busiest tourist destination – now even more popular than Cairo – Cape Town is definitely the favoured destination of touring rugby teams to South Africa.

The beauty of Table Mountain, an abundance of activities, great training grounds, good food, and a very knowledgable and passionate rugby public.

It’s hard to beat.

We arrived in Cape Town late Friday night after a solid day of travel, and everyone was looking forward to a good night sleep.

Saturday was a day to get some recovery – a few team activities to get everyone out and about and a brief team meeting and a good night’s sleep.

Sunday was a rare full day off, which the guys put to good use. There were a number of activities to choose from – a game of golf, a drive through the Stellenbosch wine region, shark cage diving, or even lunch in a tree-house restaurant.

I chose the shark diving, as I’d been a few years ago with the Western Force and it was awesome, despite the poor water visibility, so I was keen to do it again.

After a two hour drive, we arrived at the launch spot where we boarded the boat and headed out toward Shark Alley, often dubbed “the McDonalds Drive-thru for the Great White shark” and made famous by many documentaries, including David Attenborough’s Earth Series – where the Great Whites terrorize the 60,000 strong Cape Fur seal colony in the area.

We donned the 7mm wetsuits with hoods and booties (the water was a cool 14 degrees), put on our masks, then the first five of us climbed tentatively into the cage.

The visibility was 15 metres and it wasn’t long before we heard the shouts from above, “Go down! Go down!”

A quick breath and under we all went, to be greeted by a massive 3.5 metre shark gliding past, just a few feet from the cage. Its stone-cold eyes sent shivers down my spine.

The sheer size of a three and a half metre missile-looking shark the size of a small car is awe inspiring – you really appreciate the power and majesty of the White Shark (whilst being very thankful that there are steel bars in front of you) as they glide effortlessly within an arms length of the cage.

It was such an awesome experience.

We took turns in the cage (five squeezed in at a time) and eight different sharks ‘visited’ us in the few hours we were out there.

We were told that some researchers estimate the Great White’s could become extinct in as little as 15 years if more is not done to conserve them and the jaws of a large shark can fetch as much as US$90,000 on the black market.

What a tragedy and indictment on mankind it would be if we lost this awesome creature.

After our day off, it was back into training on Monday – and you can definitely feel the energy amongst the group leading into our first game against the Springboks.

Training has been pretty intense, with everyone ensuring we prepare ourselves as best we can.

The Boks have looked good this year, they’ve got a huge amount of experience (over 700 Test Caps between them), a big forward pack, with speed out wide, and their tactical kicking has been superb.

But we’re very excited about the opportunity on Saturday.

We’ve come off a loss to New Zealand after a decent start to the year in the inbound domestic series.

We feel as though we’ve taken big steps to fix the issues identified after the All Blacks game and we’re looking forward to putting that behind us and moving forward against the Springboks at Newlands on Saturday.

Until then we’ll be putting up with the South African public doing their best to make us feel “welcome” with their standard, “Good luck. You’ll need it!” Or sometimes simply, “You guys are going to get smashed on Saturday.”

Or even things like a note from a fellow diner handed to us by a waitress yesterday. It read: “Are you guys having Francois Steyn nightmares yet? – Bok Supporter.”

I don’t think they needed to add that they were a Springbok supporter. A definite “captain obvious award” nominee right there.

David Pocock is a current Wallaby and columnist for The Roar. The ex-Zimbabwean plays for the Western Force in the Super 14 competition. He is the founder of the charity Eightytwenty Vision.

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