A 17-foot great white shark bit into a cage full of divers and began shaking it with considerable force in what the woman who was face-to-face with the shark called “the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my life.”
Nancy Lasuzzo of Bossier City, La., was at the front of the cage and couldn’t have gotten much closer to the female great white shark known as Bullet.
The encounter occurred two Saturdays ago during a five-day trip with Islander Charters out of San Diego to Guadalupe Island, a famous cage-diving destination 200 miles off Ensenada, Mexico.
“It is a daunting thing no matter what, if you see a 17-foot white shark two feet away from you,” John Conniff of Islander Charters told CBS8 San Diego.
The great white shark swam up from the depths and bit into a big plastic float attached to the top of the cage. Conniff told CBS8 he wasn’t nervous or scared, “but it was definitely something that kept me on my toes for sure.”
To Lasuzzo, one of 14 women on the charter, it was exhilarating.
“She came up from the depths and she just showed us who was boss,” Lasuzzo told CBS8. “She shook our cage a little bit, but surprisingly there as no fear, it was just pure adrenaline and joy.
“When it was over, it was just a feeling like, ‘Wow, I was just chosen for that moment in time,’ and I will never forget that. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life.”
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Conniff and his wife Juliet told CBS8 that Bullet is the biggest great white shark they have seen at Guadalupe Island in a few years.
“You could see the women in the cage, they were thrilled about this,” Juliet told CBS8. “It does a good thing for sharks because it goes to show they are not scary.”
Added John, “I think she [Lasuzzo] understood that she was safe the whole time, and we were in a somewhat controlled environment. She was getting footage of a lifetime.”
Photo courtesy of Islander Charters.
