By Stephanie Hanes

As soon as I slipped into the greenish-blue water, into the enclosure the boat crew simply called "the cage," I realized I couldn't breathe.

It was the cold, I thought. There hadn't been any wet suits my size, so I was wearing one that was too big, without a hood, and the chilly ocean water circulated around my body, mocking any concept of insulation. With one hand, I clutched the iron grab bar in the cage – a safe place to hold on, our guide had told us – and I gulped for air, tasting briny seawater instead.

Then I heard marine biologist Michael Scholl yell at the four of us floating in the cage. "Go down!" That was our cue, he had told us before we got on the boat that morning. It meant we were supposed to hold our breath, duck underwater, and look through our goggles; it meant that a great white shark was swimming nearby.

This, of course, was the point of cage diving with sharks – an increasingly popular adventure in waters near Cape Town, South Africa.

I was already shivering, but didn't know what else to do. I went under.

The shark cage is about three feet wide, and more than six feet high. It is tied to the side of the boat “Shark Fever” and to a number of buoys that keep it floating – so about a foot of the cage is above water. It has a barred lid that is closed as soon as the divers are in the cage – a safety measure, Mr. Scholl told us, to keep a great white from gliding in with us.

(I checked the bars – wide enough to squeeze through if the cage, for some reason, sank. But which would be better, I wondered, drowning in a sinking cage or getting eaten by a shark?)

The water looked brownish and dusty from below the surface. But within seconds, a huge mass of grayish-white flesh was in front of me – no more than inches away. It was ghostlike, floating, its humongous mouth slack-jawed, its dark eye no more than inches from mine.

It was more awesome than scary. The creature seemed so calm; its path through the water cradle-rocking smooth. I could start to understand why some people might be tempted to reach out and stroke it – something that Scholl had warned us was the No. 1 violation of cage diving. It sounded stupid at the time. No touching the great white sharks through the cage, he’d told us. The group of tourists started to laugh.

“No. Seriously,” he said, some people have tried to touch the sharks. "We will cancel the dive for everybody else on the boat and head back to shore.... Those sharks are by far not as dangerous as most people believe but they are still very powerful animals; they might hurt you without intending to."

One swipe of a powerful fin and your arm could shatter, he added.

I had no real desire to touch the shark. But at that first sighting, I also wasn't as frightened as I thought I'd be.

Then, with a wave of panic, I became convinced that my frozen legs were floating uncontrollably through the bars of the cage. I tried to pull my feet closer to my body, and felt like I was flailing. I shot up through the surface and tried to get air.  Not much came in, and I felt my teeth clacking against each other.

"Go down!"

I ducked again, trying to keep track of my bobbing limbs. This time, the shark came toward us ferociously, mouth open, lunging, a rocket with jagged teeth in full display. It was going for a piece of bait the crew had tossed into the water, which was attached to a rope so the thrower could retract it before the shark got it. But the shark might as well have been coming for us. It exploded through the water, an inch from the cage – an inch from me.

The wave shook the cage, and I recoiled into the Italian tourist next to me. I was shivering harder now. As I pushed my head above the surface, I heard one of the crewmembers joke that I was turning a new shade of blue.

"Go down!"

Again, underwater, I see near me the shark, this creature that doesn't survive long in captivity, that is still a mystery to most scientists, that is revered and feared and honored. It is quiet. I have the sense that it is only the shark and I, looking at each other, and I am acutely aware that I am the creature out of place.

Out of breath, I shoot up again to the surface.