Matt has the easy job; Tiki just swims with sharks
Posted: Friday, May 04, 2007 10:38 AM by Jen Brown
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Where in the World
(By Tiki Barber, TODAY national correspondent)
Having watched “Where in the World is Matt Lauer” over that last four or five years, I was already a big fan of Matt’s experiences around the globe before joining TODAY. Now, I was given the opportunity to be a part of the series when I was sent on assignment to Cape, Town, South Africa.
Matt has the hard job—spending less than a day in a location, delivering his stories, then getting on a plane to fly thousands of miles to the next place, only to do it again, five days in a row. I had the easy job—swimming with great white sharks! WATCH VIDEO
Let me back up for one minute, getting to South Africa is not an easy task… especially when you miss you connection at Heathrow Airport in London, lose your bags (see Sean Reis’ blog on buying me underwear, a must read), have a 10 hour unplanned layover, which makes an already long 19 hour journey, into 36 hours. And forget about adjusting to jetlag; I was on my way to Shark Alley at 6:45 a.m. the next morning.
We took a two-hour drive to the little seaside town of Gansbaai, where we were meeting Brian McFarland, who is a local shark expert. In a previous life he was an ocean diamond hunter, a wreck diver and a shark fisherman. He eventually gave all that up and came to appreciate the grace and beauty of this massive sea predator that so many fear, mainly from its depiction in the “Jaws” movies. Brian was out to show us, and any who would listen, that the great white was not as bad as we are shaped to believe. Oh yeah, and he had a cage that I was to get in to prove his point.
In actuality, I really wasn’t that scared. Brian was great at convincing us that we had nothing to fear, especially after showing us an island, Geyser Rock, directly next to Shark Alley. It is home to some 60,000 Cape Seals, and where a shark would go if it wanted to “drive through” eat.
So, into the tank I jumped, nervous, anxious, excited to see the beast. After some clever baiting (Brian has a fake seal named Gladys that attracts sharks, along with a severed and bloody tuna head), the great white appeared. I have to tell you, the grace and majesty and lightning acceleration of such a massive animal was awe-inspiring. I thought that I would be recoiled in the back of the cage, watching with wide open eyes; instead, I found myself wanting to be closer, and when a great white caught onto the bait and was thrashing wildly against our cage, I actually stuck my hand out of the cage and tried to touch its sandpaper-like skin. He moved away before I could contact him, but as I left the cage, I had a new respect for these animals. They weren’t these super aggressive man-eaters of television lore, they were curious of us and only focused on having a meal.
Even though I was only in the water for 45 minutes or so, it felt as if time evaporated. I got out and asked our producer, Sean, as Brody asks Hooper in the last scene of Jaws, “what day is this?”
The answer was Monday, but it really didn’t matter. Two weeks on the job and I’m on the ground (or in the water) running… and loving every minute of it.
