Swimming with tuna and sharks

Trip Start Sep 25, 2008
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Trip End Ongoing


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(Sydney hotels)

Flag of Australia  , South Australia,
Wednesday, December 10, 2008

This is a very interesting place not quite what I had expected, the town is large had has all the services that you could need with a great climate. We got in late and had been booked to do a swimming session with the Tuna so we found a spot down near the marina and pulled up for the night.
 
We headed out the next morning to where they fatten the southern blue fin tuna in massive fishing net cage out in the ocean about 10km for Port Lincoln. The tank was the same as what the commercial guys use except they had a pontoon in the cage and an underwater area that you could watch from. These fish are very cool about 50- 80kg each and around a metre long and very fast. The commercial guys feed the fish in each cage about 2 tonnes of fish each day. So they where happy for us to feed them, they had heaps of dead fish and after we had feed them from the pontoon they suggested swimming in the water with them. So we all got in.  The guide had bet me $5 that I couldn't catch one and was happy for me to try and dive in after them (no hope). We spent the next 30 minutes with snorkels and mask and where feeding the tuna and watching as they swam around (very fast).
 
The next day I had booked in to be the fish bait by doing a Great White cage dive 60km off the coast of Port Lincoln in a seal area. We arrived and the guides threw over some tuna heads and blood, within minutes we had a 4 metre great white circling the boat wanting to get the tuna heads that they had on ropes (they would play a game of cat and mouse with the sharks). We then got a 4 man shark cage in the water and suited up for a 1 hour session in the cage (all the time they are throwing Blood oil and playing game with the sharks to keep them around) by the time I got in the cage we had 3 - 4 sharks around all great whites ranging from 3 - 6 metres all more than capable of eating me. What a cool, outrageous, fantastic, crazy experience - one large shark tried to get into the cage and at one stage we had a shark half stuck between the cage and the ropes that connected it to the boat. If you are an adrenalin nut which I know a lot of you are this is a must to do (only one of two places in the world that you can do this and the other place is South Africa.) We had a lay day in Port Lincoln and also had a tour of a fresh fish factory where I learned how to fillet a fish and that you need to freeze a fresh squid before you eat it.
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