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Less than 24 hours after arriving in South Africa, I was on a boat about to cage dive with sharks. There wasn’t much time to settle in or really even process the fact that I was actually there in Gansbaai, South Africa. I had traveled thousands of miles to spend time with Marine Dynamics/Marine Dynamics Academy and almost immediately I was heading out onto open water as a client, pulling on a wetsuit, and dropping into a cage with bronze whaler sharks swimming inches away.

For years, marine biology had existed for me in virtual classrooms, textbooks, research papers, documentaries, photographs on Instagram, and countless plans I was trying to make happen. I had earned my degree and spent years learning about marine animals and the environments they inhabit, but there is a difference between studying something and finally being surrounded by it. Suddenly, I wasn’t looking at someone else’s photograph or watching someone else’s experience. I was in the water, watching sharks move past the cage in front of me.

For the next eight days, that feeling would repeat itself again and again.

Finding My Sea Legs

The next morning, I returned to the shark boat, Slashfin. Only this time I was a volunteer. My job wasn’t particularly glamorous but one that I genuinely enjoyed. I helped guests with life jackets and wetsuits, grabbed towels or a warm drink for them after they came out of the water. I also quickly discovered working at sea meant dealing with seasickness – mostly other people’s while steadily preventing my own. Mints and the wind against my face were my trick!

The waters around Danger Point, that morning, were unlike anything I had ever experienced. It definitely, lives up to its name. At first, simply figuring out how to stand and move around the boat without being thrown off balance was a challenge. Eventually though, I started learning to move WITH the waves/boat and not brace against it. I learned to watch the waves, feel the motion of the boat, anticipating the movements, and adjusting my balance. For me, slightly bent knees and heels up were the key to my balance. I was slowly finding my sea legs.

The following day, I joined the whale watching boat, Dreamcatcher. Spotting whales sounds simple enough until you’re trying to distinguish a distance blow from whitecaps while wind and waves are breaking across the ocean. At one point, I thought I did see the dorsal ridgeline of a humpback at the surface, but I wasn’t confident enough to say anything. Turns out, I did.

It was a small moment, but it’s one I remember because there was something satisfying about realizing that some of the knowledge and observation skills I had spent years developing were actually translating to being out on the water. That trip also brought my first whale encounters in South Africa: a Southern right whale with her calf and glimpses of humpbacks surfacing in the distance.

We continued out to Geyser Rock and Dyer Island, where the Cape Fur Seal colony offered a completely different experience, that textbooks and photos do not prepare you for. The entire colony of Cape Fur Seals sounded like a flock of sheep bleating loudly. If you’ve seen the movie The Sheep Detectives, you’ll remember the scenes where Hugh Jackman will rhetorically ask the sheep a question and all of them respond in what he hears as bleating. 100% what this colony of seals sounds like.

They were loud, chaotic, hilariously entertaining, and constantly moving. From diving and flipping through the water, posing on the rocks, and interacting with one another. I instantly decided I had to get a chance to snorkel with them, before the end of my stay.

Not everything that week involved whales, sharks, and goofy charismatic animals, though. Later that day, we conducted estuary monitoring, which meant walking through freezing, waist-deep water while collecting water-quality information and recording birds in the area. It’s probably not the image most people picture when they think about marine biology, but it is an important part of the field. I had come to South Africa for experience, and the less glamorous parts of fieldwork were just as much a part of that experience as the animals I had traveled there hoping to see.

The Day I’ll Never Stop Thinking About

Then came July 17, 2026.

That morning I was on the whale-watching boat again hoping to find whales, knowing there are no guarantees with nature. But we did.

Frist, we encountered another Southern Right Whale and a young calf hanging out near the surface. We stayed with them for about 10 minutes before continuing farther out to sea.

And then it happened, about 200 meters away, a humpback whale breached.

Seeing a humpback breach had been one of those experiences I had always hoped I would witness in person someday, and I would have been thrilled to see it happen once. Instead, the whale kept going, breaching multiple times and appearing on both sides of the boat so that everyone had a chance to see it.

After that whale apparently decided it was done showing off, we continued around Danger Point and somehow found two more humpbacks breaching and repeatedly slapping their long pectoral fins against the surface. Even knowing these were normal humpback behaviors, I wasn’t prepared for the sound. There is something very different about knowing how large and powerful a humpback whale is and actually hearing the force of its pectoral fin hitting the ocean.

I had seen breaches and pectoral slaps countless times in photographs and videos. I understood what I was looking at. But standing on that boat, hearing it and watching it happen in front of me, made knowing something and experiencing it feel like two completely different things. From Ohio to The Ocean

I didn’t think the day would get even better but then it did.

Getting Into the Water

Once back on land, it was quick transition for a few of the volunteers and myself to pack up wetsuits, stop by the lodge, get wetsuits on and head back to the boat launch. Dickie Chivell was taking us out to Shark Alley, on Calypso, to snorkel with Cape fur seals off Geyser Rock.

I had some nerves about getting into the water, those immediately vanished as soon as I put my face underwater. The seals were super curious; swimming all around us, coming up to us with open mouths like puppies, blowing bubbles, and twisting effortlessly through the water. I’m fairly certain, I was body-bumped once or twice as they darted between us.

Watching a seal move from a boat is one thing; being in the water while they swim around you is completely different. Their speed and agility become impossible to miss. There we were, floating awkwardly in wetsuits, while the seals made every twist, turn, and flip look effortless. My time in the water was nowhere near long enough, and I could have stayed there for hours. At the same time, respecting wildlife is part of conservation and marine biology. We were visitors in their environment, and that meant knowing when it was time to leave. From Ohio to The Ocean

This moment further sealed (no pun intended) something I had already suspected about myself. I didn’t only want to study marine life from behind a computer. I want opportunities to be in the field, to be on the water, and when appropriate in the water.

On the ride back, bouncing over swells, getting major airtime, and keeping an eye for whales, I couldn’t believe that I had experienced all of this in one day. How is this my life?

Back in The Cage

The next morning, I was encouraged to get back into the shark cage since I only had two days left in Gansbaai. This time, I brought my GoPro with me.

It was interesting returning to the same experience I’d had during my first hours in South Africa because only a few days had passed, but my perspective had already shifted. I had spent more time on the boats, watched bronze whalers approach the cage again and again, observed their movements from above the water, and seen how little interest they seemed to have in the playful seal that occasionally visited the dive site. I’d also watched seabirds hover around the boats, waiting to grab whatever opportunity they could from the activity below.

Being underwater with the sharks again was every bit as amazing as it had been the first time. We tend to experience sharks through stories long before most of us ever encounter one in person. Movies, headlines, and popular culture tell us what being in the water with a shark is supposed to feel like, but actually being there was different. There was excitement and adrenaline, of course. These were large, wild predators moving just outside the cage. But there was also the simple experience of watching an animal move through its environment.

It wasn’t the shark from a movie or a headline. It was just a shark being a shark.

Looking Beyond the Big Animals

One of my favorite things about the week was realizing that not every memorable encounter involved something enormous. On July 19, we snorkeled in the harbor, where there were no breaching whales or large sharks. Instead, I found myself looking at starfish, huge numbers of sea urchins, and a shyshark.

It was a reminder of something that can be easy to forget when whales and sharks understandably command so much attention: marine ecosystems aren’t built from charismatic megafauna alone. There is an entire world beneath the surface that most of us rarely get to see, and some of the quieter moments of the trip gave me the chance to notice it.

From Asking Questions to Answering Them

My last day at Marine Dynamics Academy started with African Penguins.

I hadn’t spent a lot of time at APSS (African Penguin Seabird Sanctuary) during this week because, predictably, I gravitated to being on the shark and whale boats, whenever possible. So getting another chance to see the penguins before leaving felt like a nice start to the day.

The penguins are adorable as expected and each have their own personality. I helped with handfeeding some of the adults that willingly take the food, for the most part, on their own. Charlie was my favorite that day. I was also able to basically give one of the penguins “uppies” to get him back in the feeding corral. The cutest part of APSS though was without a doubt, the baby penguin that was losing his fluff and had a mini mohawk.

After feeding time, I went out on my last whale watching boat and the ocean had a few last-minute introductions to make that day. During the trip, we were visited by Southern Right Whales, Humpbacks, and even a Bryde’s whale surfacing. Along the coastline, I also got to see humpback dolphins for the first time.

But one of the moments I remember most from that specific boat trip wasn’t an animal encounter. Passengers started asking questions about the seals and the sharks in the area, and I was able to answer them. It wasn’t a dramatic moment, nobody announced anything, there wasn’t some realization accompanied by a humpback breaching perfectly. I just simply knew the answers and was able to use what I’d learned both there in Gansbaai and from course work.

It was such a small thing, but that moment meant more to me than I really expected.

More Than the Wildlife

It would be easy to remember South Africa entirely through its animals, but this trip was so much about the people met while there too.

From wild boat rides and freezing water. Sunset at Walker Bay, exploring caves along one of the most beautiful coastlines I’d ever seen. A bonfire, a braai, takeaway dinners, ridiculous towel-snapping battles, ping pong and pool. Long conversations with people from completely different backgrounds and places who had ended up in the same little corner of South Africa because we all cared about the ocean. There were crew members who told us they were sad to see us leave and hoped we’d come back. And the wonderful volunteer program coordinators that made sure we always had what we needed.

And then, way too quickly, the volunteer portion of the trip was over.

On July 20, I left Gansbaai for Cape Town. That evening, my friend Cam that traveled here with me and two other volunteers, we had met during transport on our very first day, walked around the V&A Waterfront, ate dinner together and ended the night in an Irish bar listening to a guitarist play Pink Floyd, Santana and Billy Joel.

It was a strangely perfect bookend to the volunteer week.

The Ocean I Had Been Working Toward

I went to South Africa wanting experience, and I came home with plenty of it. I had watched Southern right whale mothers travel with their calves, heard the impact of a humpback’s pectoral fin against the ocean, and watched humpbacks throw themselves clear of the water again and again. I had been surrounded underwater by curious Cape fur seals and looked through the bars of a cage at bronze whaler sharks.

I had also frozen in an estuary collecting data, helped people squeeze into wetsuits, fed penguins, snorkeled through a harbor, learned how to stay upright on a boat in rough seas, and spent more hours on the water than I could probably count. The wildlife encounters were incredible, but the trip was about more than checking animals off a list. For eight days, I got to experience pieces of what working around the ocean could actually look and feel like.

When I think about what the trip meant to me, though, I keep coming back to that last whale watch. I arrived in South Africa as the person climbing onto the shark boat as a client. Eight days later, I was standing on another boat answering people’s questions about the animals around us.

For years, becoming a marine biologist had been something I was working toward. There had been classes, papers, exams, and plenty of moments when the life I wanted still seemed far away. South Africa didn’t mean I suddenly had everything figured out or knew exactly where that life would take me. But for eight days, I got to live a small piece of it.

Standing on that boat and realizing that something I had spent years learning could help someone else understand the animals we were looking at made the dream feel a little less abstract. For years, marine biology had existed for me in textbooks, research papers, documentaries, photographs, and plans for a future I was still trying to build.

In South Africa, it stopped feeling quite so distant.