The carcharodan carcharias, or the 'Great White' to its friends, is an icon of fear for most. Six years ago, Carte Blanche went down in a cage and came face to face with this super fish of the deep. We survived to tell the tale.
Hundreds of tourists followed in our wake, but this time Carte Blanche is heading out from Simonstown to get a very different view of the Great White.
Despite a washed-up trawler on the beach with the waves still pounding over it, we seem to be in luck, with calm seas, the odd drizzle and the dawn doing its utmost to get out of the cloud.
Naturalist, seaman and eco photographer, Chris Fallows has spent five years in the False Bay area studying this super predator. He has observed a unique phenomenon in the way the Great White hunts its prey. With him and his fiancé, Monique Le Seur, we're hoping to catch this remarkable action.
Seal Island, about 5kms off shore, is really just an isolated pile of rocks, but the secret lies in the name. It's home to about 64 000 seals and it's during the winter months when steenbras and yellowtail aren't available that seal meat moves to number one on the shark's menu. In fact, you could say their fate is sealed...
When the seals leave the island to get their own food, they have to swim through a ring of peril - an area the sharks stalk, waiting for a lone seal... and then they strike.
Chris explains the breach: 'The shark uses the bottom as camouflage and he picks out the silhouette of a seal and comes at high speed to the surface. It's the final thrust before he hits that seal that takes him cart-wheeling out of the water, sometimes two, three metres into the air.'
The natural breach is that incredible and very rare moment when the super predator leaps out of the water in an attempt to catch a Cape Fur seal.
It's frustrating work to say the least. Together with Rob Lawrence, Chris's partner in the second boat, we stalk the sharks stalking the seals. Sometimes it`s difficult to work out what we're meant to be looking at or where.
If anyone knows how to read the signs, it's Chris. His pictures of the sharks' high jumps have gone around the world and he's taken out wildlife crews from National Geographic to Discovery.
'Technically, you can learn so much about a camera, but first and foremost, you must understand how the animals move and what makes them do certain things. Monique and I spend thousands of hours behind a lens every year. Your hands cramp, you get headaches from concentrating to get the images you do,' Chris says.
There are a couple of reasons why this is such a unique place for the sharks to breach. The first is that there is very little human intervention - this place is pristine. The second is that there is a sharp drop-off from the island to a depth of 25m, giving the sharks the perfect launch pad for their aerial antics.
Wildlife crews, scientists and tourists have come flocking to this area - not just because it's the Great White Mecca but because Chris has developed a unique method of provoking a breach - unique and very simple.
A cutout carpet in the shape of a seal is used to lure the Great White. We throw it in and drag this carpet cutout behind the boat. Now the endless waiting and watching begins again.
Chris explains how he developed this special decoy: 'We started with a life jacket that we towed along, then we progressed to using surfboard blanks that we cut out into certain shapes, but the sharks destroyed those really easily... we didn't want anything that could hurt the shark, so we moved on to the Van Dyk specialities that are very shark friendly. They've got the same silhouette, they drag well and they can be hit several-dozen times.'
A shark suddenly appears above the water, but the breach is over in 7/10th's of a second - one blink of the eye and you've missed it.
'That shark was about 3m in length. It's still a little teenager and obviously hasn't figured out the finer points of hunting yet - but very spectacular nonetheless. Always an incredible feeling to see those magnificent animals blasting out the water,' says Chris.
It might look like a circus trick, but with meticulous note-taking and research, Chris has been tracking the factors that lead to this spectacular display.
'It's not just a game. It looks like a great thing - you throw a carpet out and a shark jumps, but there's a lot more to it. It's trying to build up some sort of idea of what makes a Great White tick and at the end of the day, our thrust is to find out what we can do to protect the Great White Shark,' says Chris.
He also says that seals aren't totally easy prey: 'Don't kid yourself. Those seals know how to evade a Great White Shark attack. In about 52 percent of the actual attacks on seals, where the shark doesn't actually get hold of the seal, the seal gets away. The seal uses incredible manoeuvrability and agility under the water to get away from the shark. The shark has got more speed than the seal, but he doesn't have the turning arc of the seal.'
Twenty-five years ago the blockbuster movie, Jaws, was released. It was a film that portrayed the Great White as a monster - and forever changed how humans see sharks.
'We worked with Peter Benchley, the author of Jaws, a few years ago, and while I was sitting having an earnest discussion with him, he said to me that the fictitious nature of his book did so much harm that if he'd known how much harm it would cause, he would never written the book,' says Chris.
`Misunderstood and in need of help` is Chris's take on these gymnasts of the sea. He and Monique certainly live by what they preach - they have developed a rather cosy relationship with the flying Great Whites and seem to know most of the sharks by their names and personalities.
'People perceive it to be just a big fish with teeth, but it's not like that at all. It's a very complicated animal in terms of its social structure and each shark has got its own personality. We've really come to love some Great White Sharks. Monique's favourite is a shark called Rasta, after a Rastafarian, because this shark is so laid back it looks like it's been smoking some happy stuff... If there's ever a White Shark that appears to be friendly, it's Rasta,' says Chris.
Spending a morning with Chris, it's easy to join his ongoing love affair with the sharks of False Bay. But sadly his view isn't shared by most South Africans, who believe that the only good Great White is a dead one.
'I find it very strange. We've had our images appear in the largest papers in the world and we've had some of the world's largest international documentary crews come out with us, yet in South Africa it still seems that a lot of people fear this animal.
"There is a very negative attitude; a lot of people want to hunt them. I wish South Africans would see the White Shark like the rest of the world is starting to see it - as a magnificent super predator. And it's a great privilege and a draw card to have them along our shores,' says Chris.