I am in the final days before my trip to South Africa to do a great white cage dive. This trip has taken me 2 years to plan and pay for. I have been researching cage dives for years before I decided on my final location. In researching, I wanted to make sure that I went with a company that is more about education and preserving sharks than just a deep sea fishing trip with cage dives thrown in. There was also a desire and need to go with a company that wasn't going to attract sharks in an unnatural way. I have been watching Shark Week for over 20 years and when I saw Chris Fallows and his photography of the Great White Sharks breaching - originally aired and called Air Jaws - I knew that I wanted to go to S. Africa to see the sharks jumping out of the water. Following him and seeing his love for sharks and wanting to preserve them and using more natural ways to get the sharks to breach made me look into S. Africa cage diving companies. I got lucky in my research - not for cage dives but trying to order some of his photographs - that he has a cage diving company and I KNEW that is the company I wanted to go through. Looking through the website - Apex Predators - I noticed that they do both cage diving and shark expeditions. Knowing that this is a bucket list trip and a (belated) birthday gift to myself I went big and decided to go with the Great White Trail Shark Expedition. I wish I could fully express the excitement I have for this trip.
This morning (Aug 22) our Great White Expedition group met up with Chris amd Monique Fallows - the leaders of Apex Predators and favorite shark photographer (well Chris is), in Mossel Bay, to leatn about some predatation and breaching. We were able to watch the use of seal decoys after some time around Mossel Bays Seal Island. It was awesome to watch them work together and how much patience is needed to get a photograph you are proud of or sometimes even just one.
Preparing for my very first international trip was a process for sure and took several attempts to get my passport. In addition, to lots of phone calls and research. First I had to order my birth certificate from another state. Then once it came in I went to send off for my passport I was first told that I needed to have a certified copy of my marriage license because my name didn't match the name on my birth certificate. I left feeling defeated but ordered a certified copy of it, tried again only to be the post office I went to only takes the first 22 people. This of course was no where listed anywhere. I called several other post office locations to only be told that I needed to be there at like 4-5 am to get in line to get my passport. I finally reached a location that told me to be there 7:30ish am and I should be able to get a place in line. This time I was the 9th person in line but again they only take the first 22 people. Once it was my turn I handed al...
While I was in Cape Town and Simon's Town there were water regulations set to help reduce the use of water since their reservoir was running low. Even at that time they were talking about bringing in desalination ships to help provide water for consumption. Since I have been back I have been keeping up with the water problems and how much worse they are now. Today I read an article that really shows how bad that water issues have become. This is something that we, in America, take for granted and complain about if the water is shut off for whatever reason. We complain about being able to only water our lawns once a week in the summer. Yes, we talk about water conservation when the lakes a getting low and drought is getting us so that we have to maybe water once every other week but to think about only being able to use 12 gallons of water per person or get down to a little over six gallons per person is overwhelming. In looking at how much water we waste per day makes me f...
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