Diving with cow sharks resembling dinosaurs

in.askmen.com

Just off South Africa's Cape Peninsula lies an innocuous short stretch of ocean. This body of water harbours a prehistoric secret: just a short hop, skip and a dive away from the shore swim living, breathing dinosaurs.


These fish have cruised our oceans for hundreds of millions of years and are called broad-nose-seven-gill sharks or 'cow sharks'. All sharks originally possessed seven pairs of gill slits and with time most species except cow sharks dropped a couple of pairs.

In fact, cow sharks have very few modern adaptations, which is why they remain one of the closest links we have to dinosaurs on earth. These dives come wrapped in a bitterly cold packaging. Even 10mm of neoprene, hoodies, gloves and boots do little to mask the 9-degree water.