One of the most awe-inspiring things I've ever witnessed is watching a great white shark attack a tuna bait - the sheer power and force of a great white in motion is stunning

Great White Shark, Australia

I took the sequence of photos below while cage diving with great white sharks with Rodney Fox in Australia. (The link goes to my previous articles and videos about that brilliant experience).

These photos are technically pretty awful - but as a sequence, I think they capture something of the staggering power of the great white as it comes in to attack. I took the photos in no more than 2 or 3 seconds. Usually great whites tend to circle and investigate tuna baits, very slowly and indifferently. They make no attempt to bite or contact with it, they simply move near to it and then head off. Often the great white completely disappears from view from the divers in the surface cage. When you can't see a great white shark anymore, that's usually the cue to be worried.

Here the great white has come out of nowhere and seized the tuna bait which is attached to a rope and buoy. Great whites tend to come at their prey from below, rocketing up to the surface with far more force than is required to utterly overwhelm their victim. This time the shark has rocketed in from the side of the bait... and it's heading straight for us in the cage without slowing down.

This is where the great white slammed into the cage, all one tonne of it

That's Julian Cohen in the foreground trying to take a photo while all of us in the cage are being thrown around.

The shark keeps on with the bait, slamming it around to wrest it off the rope.

This is where I was literally knocked off my feet by the force of the shark - the great white is so intent on its prey it smashes its full weight against the cage as it wrestles with the bait.

Having gained the bait, the great white plunges back down away to take its meal to the depths. That left four somewhat dazed divers in the cage, stunned by the speed and ferocity of what we'd just witnessed inches away from us.

If ever you need a demonstration of the power of Mother Nature, this would be a pretty good contender.

Read my complete account of cage diving with great white sharks with Rodney Fox in Australia.

50 years ago no one took Neville Coleman seriously when he set out to dive the entire Australian coast and document the incredible marine life he discovered. Now he's regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on Asia-Pacific's underwater world.

This article was first published in Scuba Diver AustralAsia magazine, Issue 3, 2008. It appears here in a slightly different form.

Photo is taken from Neville's own website NevilleColeman.com

To see more of my stories for Scuba Diver AustralAsia magazine, visit my Scuba Diving Magazine Stories page.

If you’ve ever wondered exactly what exotic species of underwater creature you’re looking at during a dive, chances are Neville Coleman can tell you. This 67 year old Australian has spent much of his life scuba diving and documenting marine life across AustralAsia, identifying 450 new species and classifying over 11,500 more.

Completely self-educated, Coleman’s self-financed, four year Australian Coastal Marine Expedition between 1969 and 1973 saw him literally diving his way around the coast of Australia in order to assess the continent’s largely unknown marine life. In doing so, Coleman established the first visual identification system of Australian aquatic flora and fauna and has continued to expand it in the years since, taking in much of the Indo Pacific as well.

To share his knowledge with a wider audience, Neville has authored over 60 reference books – the latest, Nudibranch Encyclopedia, is his most comprehensive identification volume yet, which has also been published digitally for viewing on both iPods and Pocket PCs. He is also working on an account of the Marine Expedition and a series of television documentaries on his subsequent Indo-Pacific explorations which explain his conviction that “scuba diving is the greatest adventure activity on the planet”.

In 2007 Neville Coleman was inducted into the Scuba Hall Of Fame in recognition of outstanding achievements to the understanding and classification of marine life. Coleman’s enthusiasm for the ocean and his thirst to share new discoveries remains boundless.

Neville Coleman

Your induction into the Scuba Hall of Fame is a deserved recognition of your discovery of your work. As you're a wholly self-taught and self-motivated scientist, do such plaudits have much value for you?

Certainly they do. Especially as it is an overseas award which is recognized the world over and therefore on the highest level obtainable. Advancing knowledge of the aquatic world in Australia appears to be of small consequence as there is little encouragement from government bodies as the government is also in the education business. Those who are employed by the government are not about to bestow any recognition on any individual, especially if they and the government and its entire resources can’t match that individual’s achievements.

Did you have any mentors when you were younger - either in person or simply from books?

When I was about 10 years old I cut out all sorts of animals from magazines and from stamps and breakfast cereal box cards and stuck them into the albums. I had a mammal album, a bird album, an insect album, a flower album, and a fish album, with critters from all over the world. I also had an old natural history encyclopedia ( which I still have) which told of amazing creatures, though the drawings were a bit exaggerated, and the natural history details, as we know them today, somewhat of a giggle. However, these creatures inspired me, especially the strange fish ( which I saw in the “SOLVOL SOAP” fish book of 1950). I was very keen on nature but there was no nature study at school.

Fifteen years later, I met Mr. Jack Ramsay who as a boy had built his own camera in the 1920s and took the first bird pictures in Australia. His father had been the Director of the Australian Museum and he was born in the basement. He helped our family along the road of life and showed me his shell collections and natural history collections and through seeing these I realized that perhaps the impossible dreams of a ten year old boy becoming a natural history explorer might not be that impossible.

Unfortunately I had no qualifications, not even a school certificate as I had left school early to get a job and help with paying the rent as my Dad was a violent alcoholic and drank most of the money he earned.

I was already scuba diving by the time and took all my new discoveries to the Australian Museum. It seemed so extraordinary to me that marine life was not common knowledge alive, only those found at low tide had been recorded. I could not understand that one had to have a dead preserved specimen before identification could be made and that there were only one or two people in the whole of Australia that could tell one specific creature from the other in any given group because they were the only experts. There was no visual identification system for aquatic creatures in the whole of Australia.

The Australian Coastal Marine Expedition lasted for 4 years. Would you say it was the defining event in your life from which everything else has flowed?

The decision to go ahead with the Australian Coastal Marine Expedition (even after the two underwater photographers who had also been going pulled out at the last minute) and left my dreams in tatters, was the second most important decision of my life. The first was to become a scuba diver after I had been badly scared by a shark in the shallows on the Great Barrier Reef when searching for shells.

My idea to complete a underwater photographic fauna survey of the Australian continent as a one man and one girl expedition without any previous experience, credentials, photographic experience, knowledge of Australia, insurance, institutional or business backing was to all the experts (who knew it was impossible) a joke. I couldn’t understand why nobody had the vision to see how important aquatic visual identification would be to the future.

I guess on paper it didn’t shape up to much. How can a boy’s dream of being an explorer compete with the common sense of those who knew better? It seemed that everybody knew I would not get back alive, so there was not much point in them supporting the expedition. That is what gave every discovery so much value. Every day I put my life on the line, you don’t get to be much closer to your spirit than that. I think some scientists became aware of what I was doing and today I have some of the most truly appreciated references any lay person could wish for from the Australian scientific community.

I worked in a printing factory, working as much overtime as I could to save for expedition over two years and sold my sports car to buy the 1952 land rover and 4 metre boat and 9 hp outboard. The Australian Rope Manufacturers donated some rope. The Australian Commonwealth grant system donated $250.00 as 4 new tires and Smith’s Crisps donated 10 bags of chips and 20 tins of dried vegetables. The expedition cost over $48,000.00 (1969/73.)

Have you seen radical changes occurring at the dive destinations to which you’ve returned over the years? What do you think is the Big Picture view ?

Yes, I have seen lots of changes but as we have no base line studies available, everybody is only guessing. We really have no idea of what we have, so who can make any judgment on what used to be? Nature is very resilient and every thing changes every minute, with the seasons, the weather, the time, nothing is ever the same, from one minute to another.

Very few humans have any understanding whatsoever of the sea and its inhabitants. We are but children in the wilderness of ignorance making assumptions based on 40 years of human knowledge on a marine environment millions of years in the making. Of course humans change things, mostly because of greed, ignorance or survival. Because we have the technology to take everything we DO!

Is it fair to say that despite the huge amount of species that you've discovered and others that have been catalogued, there is still a huge backlog of work to be done in understanding these creatures? Do we need more marine biologists?

There is a gigantic backlog of marine life awaiting descriptions in museums. There are no longer even taxonomists in the various departments of Australian Museums as there are no jobs because there is no funding from the government just for the advancement of knowledge. Today’s museums have to pay their own way, they are no longer fully supported by the government. Very few marine taxonomists have been trained in Australia over the last 40 years because there have not been jobs for them.

We are very much behind the eight ball. That is why my original AustralAsian Marine Photographic Index will prove so beneficial to the future of the Diving Industry because in reality.......divers are the only ones now who can successfully explore the oceans and record the marine life. Divers are now the only hope the World of water has. Unless we all work together to establish base line studies of our dive sites, it will never happen.

Marine science does not have the business interest, the skills, the motivation, or the opportunity to go photograph the entire marine fauna of the Asia/Indo- Pacific this because they must have funds to perform any duties and there are no funds. We, as the diving industry must wake up and see that we need to look after our own backyards and establish real programs of discovery for the new age of scuba divers to participate in, because everybody is an explorer and "learning is the greatest adventure" there is.

South Australia's Rodney Fox Expeditions is the only operator in the world where you can scuba dive with great white sharks. Chris Mitchell comes face to face with the ocean's most fearsome predator.

This article was first published in Asian Diver magazine, Issue 98, 2008. It appears here in a slightly different form.

Photos were provided by Geri Murphy for the magazine. Below are my own videos from the trip.

To see more of my stories for scuba diving magazine, visit my Scuba Diving Magazine Stories page.

It comes out of nowhere. One moment I'm intently scanning the blue that's empty all around, the next moment there is the massive, deadly bulk of a great white shark silently gliding only inches from me. It's at least four metres long, nearly a ton in weight and fully capable of biting me clean in half. I can see the ghastly smile of its razor sharp teeth, the roughness of its grey and white skin and the big, black, blank eye that's staring right at me, and the only thing between me and the great white are the bars of the aluminium cage I'm in, 10 metres down on the ocean floor. If I was feeling particularly stupid, I could reach out and touch it. My throat suddenly feels dry and I realise I'm taking several shallow, rapid breaths through my regulator as the adrenalin surges through my system. The coldness of the South Australian water is suddenly forgotten. I'm face to face with the stuff of most people's nightmares.

Great White Shark, Australia

But besides the reflex sensation of fear, I'm also feeling an unmistakable euphoria at being so close to this savage yet undeniably beautiful creature. I follow the great white as it slowly circles around us, curious about these new arrivals to its reef. It casually inspects the cage and its occupants for another couple of seconds, its eye implacable and unblinking, and then imperiously arcs away back out into the blue with a single flick of its massive tail, its shadow fading away across the sand. Each of us look at each other and cracks a huge grin. Welcome to cage diving with great white sharks, Rodney Fox style.

Rodney Fox Expeditions is the only operator in the world that lets scuba divers descend to see great whites on the reef itself, as well as providing the more traditional shark cage tethered to the boat just under the ocean’s surface. Winched down by a hydraulic crane onto the sand of the reef below, the scuba cage provides a unique perspective on these fearsome predators in South Australia’s winter waters and lets divers get right in amongst the sharks’ own reef environment as well as being able to see them at the surface. The 10 – 15 metre visibility at the Neptune Islands means that it’s easy to become preoccupied with the big rays and napoleon wrasse that inhabit the reef, and to forget you’re doing the dive to see great whites - until one of them makes an appearance.

It’s no surprise that Fox Expeditions pioneered the scuba cage dive – Rodney Fox is a living legend in shark circles, having miraculously survived a Great White attack in 1963 despite requiring 412 stitches. After making a full recovery, Fox faced his fears and became a recognized world authority on the great white shark. Fox has been running great white expeditions off the coast of Southern Australia from Port Lincoln for over 40 years. He has been involved in virtually every film ever made about great whites, including Jaws. He also set up Adelaide’s Rodney Fox Shark Museum and The Fox Shark Foundation to tag, name and monitor the great whites that are seen on expeditions. It’s a remarkable series of achievements for a man who nearly died after being attacked by the very creature that he’s worked so hard ever since to protect. (You can read my interview with Rodney Fox by following the link).

Today Rodney’s son Andrew runs the expedition trips and Rodney, now 66 years old, attends as a guest of honour on several trips a year. The wealth of knowledge and fascination that the Foxes have about great white sharks makes a big difference to the enjoyment of the trip. But Rodney is remarkably modest and without a hint of machismo. As a shore party left to go and see the seal colonies on the northern Neptune Island, Rodney could be heard on the radio telling the tour leader to “make sure you pick some of those pretty flowers” to the great amusement of everyone else.

The shark trips run from three to five days to ensure the best chances of shark sightings. Of the 12 guests on our trip, 4 had come back to do it again, so amazed were they by their first encounter with the whites. Why do great whites exert such a fascination on the human imagination? Perhaps it’s because we have a primal fear of being eaten alive. When a diver comes face to face with a great white, they’re not just seeing the looming, sinister presence of the real shark itself – they’re seeing a living, breathing symbol of death with the Jaws theme tune playing in the background for good measure. But seeing the whites also makes you realize they are not the crazed killing machines of popular myth – they move with a fearless mix of grace and guile, perpetually unpredictable and so continually fascinating. The jangle of adrenalin caused by fear never goes away even over four days of great white watching, but it’s certainly becomes easier to control once you realize that the great whites won’t be malevolently battering the cage in order to gain access to its fleshy occupants.

That said, my very first entry into the surface cage couldn’t have been more dramatic. After sliding into the icy 14 degrees C water encased in a 7 mil wetsuit, hood, gloves and a bulky weightbelt, I clutched onto the cage’s handrail to steady myself. My dive hood and the viewing slot of the cage narrowed my vision to looking out into the blue straight ahead. There was no sound but my own breathing through the surface pumped hookah and the muffled rumble of steel on steel as the cage gently moved in the surface swell. The tuna bait attached to a rope floated on the surface just above us, the sun streaming through the water, but not making the ocean feel any warmer.

Without warning, the great white appeared right beside me, its size dwarfing the width of the cage. The atmosphere in the cage was electric as the four of us craned to see where it would go as it looped around and behind us. Then, just as it seemed the white had disappeared, the whole cage suddenly shook violently as the great white slammed into it with the full one ton sideways force of its body. My two dive buddies nearest to the white were nearly knocked over by the force of the impact, and the four of us in the cage could only watch in amazement as the white twisted and rolled in a frenzy to rip the tuna bait from its rope, having lunged at it from below with fantastic speed that was wholly at odds with its seemingly indifferent inspection of the bait only moments before. The great white’s jaws fully opened so that for a split second I was staring into a razor-edged abyss into which my whole body could fit, before it engulfed the bait and hurtled away from the surface, leaving a nothing but a swirl of bubbles, a frayed rope and 4 slightly shaken but totally exhilarated cage divers. To be separated from a great white shark ripping its prey to pieces by only the thin bars of an aluminium cage is something I will not forget easily.

Witnessing this same mode of attack from the dry comfort of the boat deck is equally impressive. The sharks that come in to take the bait often breach the water in spectacular fashion as they attack their prey. The great white will launch itself nearly half way out of the water as they seize the bait, having come in for the attack directly below and accelerating to 30 miles an hour in an unstoppable onslaught that has so much power they explode out of the water. The shark breaches for a couple of seconds at most, and it has the same wholly unpredictable ferocity and speed as underwater. It was here that Rodney Fox lived up to his reputation. On our final afternoon, a couple of hours from departure, everything had gone quiet. Rodney took over holding the bait rope. There were a few of us standing behind him, getting a bit bored scanning the empty water, so we started teasing Rodney. "Go on Rodney!" we said. "Show us your magic!" He gave a flick of the bait rope, saying "It's all in the wrist". Within 5 seconds of Rodney picking up the rope, a great white breached almost wholly out of the water only 10 feet away from the boat and took the entire bait in one huge thunder of water and shrieks of disbelief and amazement from the rest of us.

Rodney took a bow.

It’s hyperbole to say that cage diving with great white sharks is life changing, but it’s not far from it when you’re blessed with conditions and shark activity like those of the Neptune Islands. A great white up close is truly fearsome, but it’s also truly beautiful, and it’s that combination of power, danger and grace that makes seeing them not only unique but genuinely moving. It’s easy to see why Rodney Fox dedicated his life to discovering more about great whites and protecting them, and why his son Andrew has become equally fascinated too. I hope they both long continue to introduce the rest of us to the realm of Australia’s great white sharks.

Chris Mitchell with Rodney Fox

Asian Diver Magazine - Great White Shark The Ultimate Predator article

South Australia: Getting There
Rodney Fox Shark Expeditions depart from Port Lincoln in South Australia. The nearest international airport is Adelaide. Connecting flights from Adelaide to Port Lincoln can be booked with RegionalExpress.com.au, usually called Rex. You can compare flight prices on , and .

Entry Requirements
Australia requires all foreign visitors to apply in advance for a visa or ETA (Electronic Travel Authority). Apply online at the Australian Government Immigration website www.eta.immi.gov.au/

Climate
Winter runs from May to October, with water temperatures around 15 degrees Celsius. Lots of warm clothing is required on the boat – hats, gloves and good shoes are a must. November to April is the warmer half of the year with water temperature up to 20 degrees and summer weather

Best Time To Dive
The winter months of June to September are the best for maximum shark sightings
January has a good record of sightings combined with warmer weather
Trips run from May to October (winter season) and November to February (summer season)

Language
Australian English

Currency
Australian Dollar. US$1 = Aus $1.23

Electricity
240 volt , Type I - 3 pin plug

Additional Information
South Australia Tourism Commission

http://www.southaustralia.com/

Dive operators
Rodney Fox Expeditions
www.rodneyfox.com.au

My articles about the discovery of the USS Lagarto and diving with great white sharks have just been published by Fah Thai and Tiger Tales inflight magazines

Fah Thai - USS Lagarto story

Tiger Tales - Tiger Airways magazine

I've been writing recently for a couple of inflight magazines. For Tiger Airways' Tiger Tales I wrote Shark And Awe, an account of going cage diving with great white sharks with Rodney Fox. You can read the full story online. For Fah Thai, the inflight magazine of Bangkok Airways, I interviewed Richie Kohler of Shadow Divers and Deep Sea Detectives fame about his involvement with the USS Lagarto, a US submarine that was discovered in the Gulf of Thailand a couple of years ago. You can read the full article online at the Fah Thai site

Fah Thai USS Lagarto / Richie Kohler article

Just published is my Asian Diver magazine article about cage diving with great white sharks with Rodney Fox in South Australia, and also my interview with Neville Coleman in Scuba Diver AustralAsia magazine. Coleman is one of Australia's most distinguished marine biologists, completely self-taught, who pushed forward knowledge of Australian marine life massively by diving the entire coast of Australia on a self-financed and often perilous expedition that took several years. Last year Coleman was inducted into the Scuba Diving Hall Of Fame, along with Rodney Fox, who is an Australian legend for surviving a great white shark attack and going on to pioneer great white conservation.

You can read my complete interview with Rodney Fox and also check out some of my great white shark videos as well as my personal favourite, Great White Shark gives me the evil eye.

Back from my trip with Rodney Fox to see the Great White Sharks off the coast of Southern Australia, here are some video clips of my time in the water with these amazing creatures

I can safely say that cage diving with the great white sharks at the Neptune Islands in South Australia is one of the best dive experiences I've ever had. I went out there with Rodney Fox Expeditions and we had great luck - we saw around 9 sharks over the four days we were out there and the weather was immaculate - beautifully sunny, although still very cold. I'm in the middle of writing an article about the trip for Asian Diver magazine, so I don't want to write too much more about it here. However, these video clips I shot with my Canon IXUS 800 should provide a fairly good idea of what we saw...

If you want to see more, I added another couple of different clips over on my other site, Travelhappy - Great White Shark gives me the evil eye. I'll be adding more great white pix and videos here shortly.

I added the complete Rodney Fox interview as I'm heading off to Australia tomorrow to meet the man himself and go cage diving off South Australia to come face to face with the great white sharks. I'm still pinching myself that this is actually happening and you can be sure that I'll be trying to shoot as much video footage and take as many pix as possible. They probably won't be that great quality wise, but they should be entertaining. I'll be back here updating Divehappy from 1st August.

Rodney Fox has helped shape our understanding of great white sharks for over 40 years and still regularly voyages off the South Australian coast to cage dive with these incredible creatures. Here's the full version of the Rodney Fox interview I did for Scuba Diver AustralAsia magazine a few months ago.

Rodney Fox is something of a legend in Australia – the man who survived a near fatal great white shark attack and subsequently dedicated his life to understanding and protecting these amazing creatures. Taken by a shark off the coast of South Australia in 1963 when he was champion abalone diver, Rodney suffered severe injuries that required over 400 stitches from a medical team frantically working to save his life. Miraculously Rodney not only made a full recovery, but he also dedicated his life to finding out more about great white sharks.

Over the last 40 years Rodney has led hundreds of expeditions to see the great whites around the Neptune Islands along with his son Andrew, bringing divers face to face with these fearsome sharks during cage dives. He also worked on the Spielberg’s blockbuster Jaws and the seminal great white documentary Blue Water White Death, directed by Peter Gimbell. It’s not just great white sharks that Rodney has been interested in though - he was also instrumental in the discovery of the whale sharks at Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia in the early 1990s.

Rodney is currently sifting through his enormous archive of great white shark material with plans to produce a book about his four decades of shark watching: “I have a lot of notes, memories and a huge collection of slide transparencies and pictures to go through”. It promises to be a unique insight into just how much things have changed for the sharks in during the last half century. Here he shares his thoughts on his life’s work watching and trying to protect the great white sharks of South Australia.

It's been 43 years since you were attacked by the great white shark that set you off on a remarkable journey to understand these fearsome creatures. What's the single most important thing you've learned about them and ourselves in that time?

Whilst recovering from my shark attack I was amazed at the reactions of so many people to sharks and the emotion shown while talking about sharks, was of fears, terror and frustration at not understanding. A bit like they would speak of the devil, hell and death. I knew nothing about sharks and could find nothing in libraries to educate myself. Being frightened of another attack, and knowing that it was a miracle that I had survived. I felt apprehensive about going through it again, without some knowledge, of species, habitat and behaviour. I planned to find out more, to see if I could go diving safely and work out if the fear generated in people’s minds was real. The single most important thing I have learnt is that we need sharks in our oceans. They are the keystone predators in the ocean food pyramid.

How is the Fox Shark Research Foundation progressing?

The Fox Shark Research Foundation was founded to further promote shark conservation issues to the public, and educate people that sharks are not all bad, and that we all have to learn to live with them as they have a place in nature. We must not kill them just because we fear them. We’ve had great interest in our Adopt-a-Shark programme, with hundreds of adopters.

The funds generated from this program have already provided help for studies on Great White Sharks, including three Satellite tags, which have shown incredible journeys that these Great whites have taken.

What's your take on the huge demand for shark's fin as a delicacy in Asia?

I think there is certainly a quite real ecological disaster looming ahead if shark finning continues. I can only quote the nearly unbelievable reported figures of up to one hundred million sharks killed per year mainly for their fins. Compared with other fish, their low birth rate and late sexual maturity simply does not allow the slow breeding sharks to sustain this level of fishing pressure.

Great whites are only caught accidentally here in South Australia now, often getting tangled in long-lines or nets set for edible sharks and other commercial fish species.

On our expeditions we often see Great whites that have escaped and at least temporarily survived encounters with commercial fishermen with damaged fins from fishing the gear, and ropes still hanging off them.

Rodney Fox and his son Andrew Fox

On the Rodney Fox expeditions, you take divers out to meet the sharks themselves. What is your perspective on sharks associating humans with food?

Over the last 40 years that I have been cage diving with great whites , we have tried dozens of places along the Australian Southern Coast and identified several “hot spots”, where great whites visit regularly to feed.

These areas are all breeding areas for sea lions like the Neptune Islands where we have permits to chum and cage dive. This area has thousands of breeding New Zealand fur seals so our chum only can try to encourage the attention of the sharks away from the seals so to come closer to our vessel. We anchor in a calm bay close to shore, that is right next to this “sharks restaurant” and trickle a mixture of minced tuna and salt water over the side. The tidal movement takes the mixture away, creating an “odour” trail back to us.

When great whites first come to the islands first looking for sea lions, they are attracted to our boat by our chum trail, as the scent of tuna is also very appealing to them at a relatively short distance. To keep them in visual range, we need to lure them in closer with a piece of fish on a rope with a balloon or float suspending it near the surface. We try not to let the sharks eat the baits. By pulling the baits away from the sharks, and with relatively few baits taken per day, the sharks don’t get enough reward for effort to start relying on us for food.

From long term studies with acoustic tags and listening stations, we have found that sharks visit the Neptune islands just as often and even slightly more often when we are not there than when we are. After a brief encounter, some sharks often go away and never get seen again. Some sharks swimming through the area are only seen passing by the cage on our submersible bottom dives and not at the surface at all.

Cage diving with the great white shark

How do your guests usually react when they come face to face with a great white shark with only a cage between them?

Underwater our guests have told us that they breathe much faster, their hearts thump heavier in their chests, and the hair stands up on the back of their necks. It is quite natural to let go of the cage with your hands and step backwards in this self-preservation mode.

When back on the surface, when the divers can finally take out their regulators, there are squeals, yells, laughter and excitement and even the me more sedate and quiet guests have the most genuine smile on their faces that’s hard to wipe off and stays put for quite a while.

What sort of safety precautions do you put in place to protect your divers besides the cage?

Pre dive lectures and video shows by our dive masters try and give divers a good idea of what to expect, and with safety warnings, like to keep your hands inside the cage. Of course nothing we can say can actually describe the real feeling of seeing such a magnificent animal underwater, and most people are more than happy to stay safe, and just enjoy the experience! In over 40 years of diving we have not had any shark injuries to our divers other than an addiction to see more and more!

You were also involved in the discovery of whale sharks off Ningaloo Reef in Exmouth in Western Australia - how did that come about?

I proposed a story to National Geographic on the North West Coast of Australia called “The Last Frontier” For three months with David Doubilet as the underwater cameraman and with me as expedition leader/writer, we travelled and dived in this huge wonderful area from Shark Bay right up to Wyndham. There were stories of giant Whale Sharks being seen by travellers and documented by researchers off Ningaloo Reef. I took a calculated guess and David and I hired an aeroplane to look for them. That year, just after the coral had spawned we were delighted to see six sharks on the first two-hour trip. I organised radio so that the plane pilot could talk to and direct our charter boat captain George King, right in front of the travelling sharks where David and I would jump in and wait until they swam by us. In those early days we often used SCUBA and without any regulations back then occasionally used underwater scooters and had other freedoms that we are not allowed now. From 1990 I organised expeditions for many other tourist groups and films including an IMAX production, and chalked up over 500 dives with Whale Sharks in those first couple of seasons. That was a really great adventure!

You have a busy schedule of running great white expeditions with your son Andrew, running the Rodney Fox Shark Foundation and consulting on shark filming too. Which of these three occupies most of your time? Is there one you have particular enthusiasm for at the moment?

These days, I spend up to 100 days per year at sea with my son Andrew, on Great White Shark Expeditions. While on shore, my wife Kay and I spend time at my Shark Experience Museum at Glenelg, giving talks and improving our exhibits, and also working on the Fox Shark Research Foundation.

As Andrew and his wife Silvy and our daughter Lenore are managing the Expeditions, Museum and Foundations it is all a family affair. On our Great White Shark Expeditions, seeing the great whites around the cages and swimming round the boat, gives me enthusiasm that doesn’t fade, especially when our guest expedition members get out of the cages, excited and with great, incredible smiles on their faces, saying things like “That’s the best thing I have EVER done!” and “The sharks are so beautiful!”

Rodney Fox is something of a legend in Australia. The man who survived a near fatal great white shark attack, he subsequently dedicated his life to understanding and protecting these amazing creatures

Recently I interviewed Rodney Fox for Scuba Diver AustralAsia magazine, and I'm really pleased that the magazine has put the entire interview online. [UPDATE: the complete Rodney Fox interview is now online here at Divehappy]. Fox is one of my heroes, so being able to chat to him - even if only by email - was a real pleasure. Best of all, I've subsequently been commissioned by Asian Diver magazine to go and dive on Rodney's expedition boat later this year and come face to face with the great white sharks off the coast of Adelaide in person. I seriously cannot wait.

Meanwhile, here's the opening of the Rodney Fox interview to whet your appetite:

"Taken by a shark off the coast of South Australia in 1963, Rodney Fox suffered severe injuries that required over 400 stitches from a medical team that frantically worked to save his life. Miraculously, Rodney not only made a full recovery, but also dedicated his life to finding out more about great white sharks.

Over the last 40 years, Rodney has led hundreds of expeditions to see the great whites around South Australia's Neptune Islands. With his son, Andrew, he brings divers face to face with these fearsome sharks, within the protection of aluminium cages. Rodney also worked on Steven Spielberg's blockbuster Jaws, and the seminal great white documentary, Blue Water White Death. It's not just great white sharks that Rodney has been interested in though - he was also instrumental in the discovery of the whale sharks at Ningaloo Reef, Western Australia, in the early 1990s.

Cage diving with the great white shark

Rodney is currently sifting through his enormous archive of great white shark material with plans to produce a book about his four decades of shark watching. "I have a lot of notes, memories and a huge collection of slide transparencies and pictures to go through," he said. It promises to be a unique insight into just how much life has changed for the sharks in the last half century. Here he shares his thoughts on his life's work watching and trying to protect the great white sharks of South Australia.

Rodney Fox and his son Andrew Fox

CM: It's been nearly 44 years since you were attacked by the great white shark, an event that set you off on a remarkable journey to understand these fearsome fish. What's the single most important thing you've learned about great white sharks, and humans, in that time?

Rodney Fox: While recovering from my shark attack, I was amazed at the reactions of so many people to sharks - everything from fear, terror, and frustration at not understanding sharks. A bit like they would speak of the devil, hell, and death.

I didn't know anything about sharks and could find nothing in libraries to educate myself. I was frightened of another attack, and knew it was a miracle I had survived. I felt apprehensive about going through it again without some knowledge of the species, habitat, and behaviour. I planned to find out more, to see if I could go diving safely and work out if the fear generated in peoples' minds was real. The single most important thing I have learned is that we need sharks in our oceans. They are the keystone predators in the ocean's food pyramid."

Read the rest of the interview at Scuba Diver AustralAsia's website and go and buy the magazine - the pictures are much better in print and there is ton of other good stuff in there!

Exmouth Gulf - one of Western Australia's most environmentally important areas and one of the best places to see whale sharks in the world - is under potential threat from a plan to build one of the world's biggest salt mines.

Halt The Salt is a website dedicated to stopping the construction of the world's biggest salt mine on the shores of Exmouth Gulf. The Gulf is home to Ningaloo Reef, one of the most spectacular reef systems in the world where whale sharks migrate every year for the annual coral spawning. Experts and locals alike fear that if the Salt Mine goes ahead, it will radically disrupt the environment of the Gulf and have a dreadful impact on the Gulf's marine life.

From the Halt The Salt website:

Straits Resources [the salt mine builder] has had to acknowledge in its own documentation the environmental concerns associated with its proposed salt mine:

* Potential loss of mangroves and associated biota such as algal mats in an area of recognised significance for these systems.
* Potential shipping and salt production impact on marine fauna such as whales and dugongs and their supporting habitats.
* Potential impact on marine and terrestrial nutrient inputs introduced by the presence of the salt field and the significance of this to the Gulf’s wider ecosystem.
* Development in an area recommended to be set aside as a marine conservation reserve.

The proposed salt mine development is absolutely huge, some 70 kilometres long and only set a few kilometres back from the coast line. Having dived Exmouth myself and heading back there again in May this year, I am pretty appalled that they would even consider proposing this, given that Ningaloo Marine Park is a protected marine area and Exmouth itself is a burgeoning tourist destination precisely because of its amazing marine life. Anything that could endanger Ningaloo's pristine status seems incredibly inconsiderate and motivated purely by profit with scant concern for the environment.

As well as porviding in-depth information into exactly what Straits Resources propose and its potential effect on the environment, the Halt The Salt website also let you take action by registering your objections to the local politicians and also helping raise awareness of the Halt The Salt campaign.