Page 98 - South Mississippi Living - October, 2019

SPORTS & OUTDOORS dun-uh dun-uh
story and photos by Frank Wilem
Coast Guard helicopter pilots who told me that the places we dove off south Florida during grad school were infested with sharks, yet we never encountered a single one there.
Brittany Wilem
sharks, the type that tends to get most folks’ attention are great whites. Great white sharks are at the very top of the oceanic food chain and are generally regarded as fearsome.
Don Gaddy and Frank Wilem
On our recent trip to South Africa, we could hardly resist a trip to Capetown to cage dive with great whites in one of the top five places in the world. At first, I was not enthused about the prospect
of diving with them. But when faced with the choice between possibly being eaten alive or facing the ridicule of my friends,
I readily agreed to do it.
I’ve been scuba diving since I got certified in high school. And I’ve learned that if
you dive very much in salt water, you encounter sharks. Interestingly, I spoke with
Most often, divers encounter species such as reef sharks, black tip, white tip, or nurse sharks, though the more serious predators like hammerheads or tiger sharks sometimes come sniffing around. But of all the
We arrived in South Africa where we spent a week hunting at the Madaka Ranch, located about 300 miles southeast of Johannesburg. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life but a full account of
our time there is beyond the scope of this article.
98 SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living • October 2019 FOR MORE REFLECTIONS OF THE GULF COAST >> www.smliving.net