Lifelong Bucket List: Great White Shark Cage Diving in Port Lincoln, South Australia

G’day, Mates!

How are you going? Over the long Deepavali public holiday weekend, Team Jansen traveled to Port Lincoln, South Australia to fulfill a lifelong bucket list item for Samantha as part of her birthday month celebration: Great White Shark Cage Diving! Port Lincoln is one of the few places in the world where you can cage dive with whites and luckily it’s also an incredibly beautiful place to visit as well!

Travel to and from Port Lincoln

Port Lincoln is located in South Australia. There is no easy way to get there from Singapore and required 3 different flights on the way there and on the way back. Our flight pattern on the way there was Singapore > Sydney > Adelaide > Port Lincoln. A total of 15.5 hours of flight time, with the 2.5-hour time change. With delays; however, we traveled for about 24 hours to get there. Our return flights were completely rescheduled due to a cancellation, Port Lincoln > Adelaide > Melbourne > Singapore, (12.5 hours) and got us home around 11PM vs. our original 5PM planned return time. The biggest hiccup was a VERY tight connection in Melbourne (40 minutes after a 20-minute in-air delay), which required a full sprint from Terminal 1, out of domestic security, through international security/customs, to Terminal 2. We’re thankful that the security people recognized our stress and let us cut in line multiple times or we would not have made our connection. While this was not the most pleasant travel, we can assure you it was all worth the trouble to get to Port Lincoln! Our short first night was spent relaxing on the couch, playing cribbage, and eating local delivery pizza.

Exceptional Port Lincoln Seafood and Wildlife Tour

Most of the tourism that comes into Port Lincoln is purely to cage dive but the area offers plenty of local history, geographical beauty, unique wildlife, fresh seafood, and wonderful people as well. One of our favorite things about the community was how much it reminded us of small–town places we love like Houghton and Marquette in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The community is small and supportive of each other, including supporting each other’s small businesses. It was rare to see a chain restaurant in the area, which was refreshing. Our local tour guide, David (nickname “Lunch”), knew everyone everywhere we went. Every restaurant we went to after our tour knew Lunch and a simple name drop warmed the locals to us immediately. This community-feel is something we look forward to having in the future when we move back home someday.

Lunch’s family owns the tour company, Australian Coastal Safaris, and we can’t recommend them enough. From the friendly and flexible booking process with Renae to Lunch’s tour, we felt welcome and could tell they love sharing their home with travelers. We spent our first full day doing their Exceptional Port Lincoln, Seafood and Wildlife Tour and learned so much about the area. The day started with a rainy-yet-beautiful hilltop view of Port Lincoln, complete with a rainbow. Next we explored and learned about the largest fishing fleet in the Southern Hemisphere! The seafood industry is an important part of Port Lincoln’s economy. It was neat to see some of the fleet unloading their catch that morning and learning about the different kinds of boats for each type of catch. Next we had a stellar cup of coffee at the Boston Bean Coffee Co., where we bought our typical souvenir, a couple bags of coffee. After coffee, we took a tour of a local fish shop where we learned about the purchasing and cleaning process of fresh seafood. That fresh seafood became our tasty lunch. After lunch, we explored the sand dunes and coastal scenery of the Port Lincoln National Park via 4×4, where we saw some emus and met a “sleepy lizard”, also known as a shingleback for their shingle-like scales. The final part of the day was spent seeing some roos, emus, and meeting the local koalas up close and personal. SO CUTE! That night we had a fresh seafood dinner at a local restaurant and crashed early.

Day of Relaxation

We spent all Saturday relaxing and doing whatever we wanted. The morning included sleeping in until 10AM, something we haven’t done in quite some time and it was glorious. After a shower, we walked into town to have brunch (really lunch) and walk the pier and shoreline. After scoping out a local sail boat race, we walked back to the AirBnB and walked the beach and shoreline across the street. Travis then did a run on the trail system nearby while Samantha bundled up in a sweater and blanket on the patio to read. #HappyPlacesForEachOfUs. We spent the evening having dinner and some local beer at the nearby brewery and crashed early for our next day’s adventure!!

Great White Shark Cage Diving

After experiencing Port Lincoln by land, we took to the sea to meet the resident great white sharks, one of the few places in the world and only place in Australia that you can cage dive with white sharks. Samantha’s favorite animal is the great white shark and she has wanted to cage dive with them her entire life. A young, marine biologist aspiring Samantha was quite happy on Sunday, 27 October, 2019 when she fulfilled that dream. We traveled with Calypso Star Charters about 35 nautical miles (3-hour boat ride) to the Neptune Islands Marine Park where about 45,000 New Zealand fur seals live, one of the primary reasons that great whites frequent the area. The first half of the ride was smooth, with the second half a being a bit bumpy but other than that little hiccup, the day was PERFECT.

Beautiful weather and a small group size (15 total cage divers with the photographer) set us up for an epic day. Once we reached the Neptune Islands we completed the safety briefing to fully understand the process. While the cage can hold up to 8 divers at a time, we split the group into three dive groups of 5, which was nice and spacious. Team Jansen dived with group 2. When you’re not in the cage, the experience is still incredible because you act as spotters from the upper deck and the sharks will frequently breach out of the water, an awe inspiring sight. Due to the waters cold temperature of 13°C (55°F), we baited, waited, and watched for a shark before getting the first group into the cage. About 1 hour after anchoring, the first of three great white sharks arrived. Seeing the white shark in the water from the boat for the first time was a humbling experience. Why? Because they are massive. A female white shark average length is 4m (13 ft) to 6.5m (21 ft) and males range from 3.5m (11.5 ft) to 4m (13 ft). On average, they can weigh 1500 to 2500 pounds. To put it into perspective, all three of the sharks we saw on Sunday were about the size of a mid-size sedan, like a Toyota Camry.

As dive group one’s 45-minutes in the cage was coming to an end, we put on our swimmers and thick wetsuits (7mm), which included booties and an optional hood. Travis wore a hood, while Samantha did not due to the claustrophobia stress it brings her. As you read before, our time in the cage was limited to 45 minutes due to the temperature of the water, which was quite a shock to the system as we slowly descended into the white’s world. To give you an idea of our environment down there… we were in a surface cage, which meant we were only about 2-to-4 ft below the water’s surface. So while we’re diving certified, you don’t technically have to be to do this “dive”. We didn’t have to regulate our air consumption because they were connected to a system on the boat that had plenty more air than a typical dive tank but we did need to stabilize our bodies using the foot bar because of the water’s movement. Then came the sharks…

If we thought the experience above water was awesome, it didn’t quite prepare us for the experience of seeing them swim next to us. They are stealthy creatures and due to their coloring, they simply appear out of nowhere. The upper half of the body is gray, which makes them difficult to see from above as they blend in with the sea and the white underside makes them difficult to see from below due to the sunlight. It’s this camouflage, paired with their powerful tail-driven swimming abilities (short bursts up to 35 mph), that make them good hunters. We saw this power firsthand when one of the great whites came for the bait, at full speed from below, and then launched its entire body out of the water to breach, landing back in the water with the entire bait in its mouth. You can see the video of it below! It was AWESOME!! The sharks are free to swim as they please, which leaves you darting your eyes and head around and below you looking for a glimpse of their beauty. We will never forget the humbling experience of having a great white shark swim next to us in the cage so smoothly and beautifully, nor will we forget their power. It truly gave us a whole new respect for these unbelievable beauties.

A HUGE “thank you” to the crew of Calypso, who have a passion for what they do, make safety 100% the top priority, kept us wonderfully fed all day, and provided us an incredible experience with the sharks. If you plan to great white cage dive, do it with Calypso.

A couple notes. The largest great white shark ever recorded via video is the female Deep Blue, a 20 ft long, 2.5 ton beauty. The only way for you to see great white sharks is in the wild as they have never been successfully contained in captivity.

Overall

Overall, Port Lincoln was a restorative trip for us. We have both felt burned-out and in need of quality alone time. Port Lincoln’s spring time provided us with the cool temperatures and coastal environment we miss from back home. This trip helped us slow down, reconnect, and make incredible memories that we’ll never forget.

Samantha’s favorite memories. Sleeping in until 10AM, patio reading in a sweater, chill vibes at the brewery, CAGE DIVING – particularly the moment when the white shark came at us like a bullet and full-body breached out of the water!!

Trav’s favorite memories. Early morning Parnkalla Trail runs out the front door, Beer Garden couch chill session with my lady, enjoying a local Cage Diver IPA in the sand dunes while we pumped up the 4×4 tires to “road pressure”, the Rogue and Rascal brunch/lunch salad, fresh oysters.

All our love,

xo Team Jansen

Note, you may have noticed that we’ve sprinkled some Aussie expressions into this post. Check out this reference guide for the meaning of these cheeky expressions.

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