DIVE HAPPY

The first 11000 mile transoceanic shark trip has been recorded by a team of scientists tracking the movements of great white sharks

Great White Sharks get a lot of bad press, especially in the last few months with the spate of shark attacks that have occurred off the coast of Australia. (Divester has plenty of posts about those). The whole Jaws stereotype never goes away, and it's easy to forget how spectacular - as well as undeniably scary - these creatures are. One of my dreams is going on a Rodney Fox Great White Shark expedition one day out of Adelaide in Southern Australia, and to see them up close.

It's heartening, then, to read about the adventures of Nicole, a female Great White Shark that scientists managed to track travelling over 11000 miles from South Africa to Australia, straight across the Indian Ocean. Great Whites don't show up around the tropical waters of Asia proper, so you won't see them scuba diving in Thailand or Borneo. But Australia is a haven for them, especially around the South, but they have been seen as far up the East Coast as Byron Bay and on the West Coast, near the Exmouth Gulf, which is where Nicole was tracked before she lost her tag.

PADI's Project AWARE has the complete run down of Nicole's travels, complete with photos, and her remarkable journey might help give a different perspective on the Great White besides the usual killer beast headlines.