Friday, March 30, 2007

Playing with Whites

Amazing video of a free diver interacting with white sharks. Notice his body languages when the sharks approach a bit more aggressively. I think this is Mike Rutzen.

3 comments:

Mark said...

Some pretty amazing footage. I do think some of the behavior of the free diver borders on harassment of these animals. I think we can take away some of the mystery and paranoia about great whites without having to pull on their tails or ride them.

Wolfgang Leander said...

The guy has a lot of guts - no question about it. On the other hand he convincingly proves that great whites are not as aggressive as portrayed even by expert shark operators who organize cage dives.

Personally, i am against cage dives as such activity only perpetuates the myth of the ferocious man-eater that has to be kept at bay. I would like to see more free-divers swimming with whites - not necessarily touching or riding them.

Obviously, whoever swims freely with whites has to be comfortable being in the water with large sharks. Free-diving with whites is certainly not for the faint-hearted (neither is parachuting or climbing vertical walls - I would die of fear if I had to do either!!) but it is not just for dare-devils.

As a free-diver you will never see a great white biting the cage bars, the teethy mouth wide open ("Jaws" .....) - an almost stereotype image that one sees over and over again.

I believe Mike Rutzen is doing the whites a big favor by simply swimming with them. And he does it very gracefully.

Anonymous said...

This is an amazing video. Shows a lot of interaction which you can't film from a cage.