http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/world/americas/diver-recounts-his-encounter-with-a-cage-breaking-great-white-shark.html 2016-10-14 23:41:39 Diver Recounts His Encounter With a Cage-Breaking Great White Shark “Honestly at that moment I don’t have time to get afraid,” Chan Ming, the diver, said of the encounter with a shark that broke through the bars of a diving cage. === A scuba diver who was on a diving tour of great white shark habitats narrowly escaped an encounter with one this month when it broke through the bars of a diving cage and thrashed for nearly a minute until it freed itself. The diver, Chan Ming, a Shanghai-based advertising executive who is a scuba instructor in his spare time, was among about 20 people on a five-day tour from Ensenada, Mexico, to Guadalupe Island. The main purpose was to see sharks, and Mr. Chan, 51, jumped into the water on Oct. 5 with a camera. He entered the cage hoping for a close-up. During the encounter, which was caught on video and then shared across the internet, a juvenile great white leaps for a piece of tuna. Mid-leap, the shark slaps against the bars of the cage, entering and thrashing while Mr. Chan is trapped inside. A tour employee immediately leaps forward to open the top hatch of the cage to allow the shark to escape. About 20 harrowing seconds later, the shark finally wriggles free, breaching as it finds its way back to open water in the Pacific Ocean. The footage was captured by the operator of the In a telephone interview, Mr. Chan said he did not have time to take photos of the encounter, and could not see what was happening as the shark was thrashing because the cage was rattling so sharply. He said he was not afraid to be trapped inside the cage with the shark. “Honestly at that moment I don’t have time to get afraid,” he said. “Because the shark is coming, a very sharp moment, two seconds.” Instead, he focused on staying inside the cage. When the shark finally breached, Mr. Chan pulled himself up and out of the cage. In the end, he still had three more days of diving left. Did he go into the water again? “The next day,” Mr. Chan said. “I felt so lucky,” he added, “why would I be scared?”