Close Encounter With Great White

Tourist Viewing One From Cage Almost Becomes Lunch

(CBS)  Great white sharks that cruise off South Africa have become a big draw for tourists looking for thrills. The trick though, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips, is to get to see the top of the marine food chain, without becoming part of it.

Phillips explains that thrill-seekers get close-up views of the sharks from the relative safety of cages. Operative word: relative.

But British tourist Mark Currie, who was videotaped by a friend, is now wondering if it was all really a very good idea.

"He just went straight for me and bit onto the cage," Currie recalls, "and then wouldn't let go. It lasted about two minutes. He was just biting onto the cage and trying to get into me."

Currie says the shark repeatedly attacked the cage, chewing through one of the floats, so the cage began to sink.

Currie, feeling very much like lunch, had to swim for it.

"It was an open top cage," he says, "so I was tilted -- tipping toward where the shark was biting."

"It was great," Currie exclaims, now that he's back home in England and lived to tell about it. "It was the best thing I've ever done."