"[Dive master] Yann noticed an immediate loss of air flowing to his regulator, so he descended a few feet down to turn on the one-way valve from the surface supply hose so that the hookah system would not lose pressure," Yonker wrote. She said it was done fast enough to prevent her and the two others in the cage from losing air.
"While Yann was turning on the valve, the shark swam vertically down into the balcony of the cage, made a sharp turn, and swam right through the bars of the cage. She thrashed around for several seconds and in the process got further lodged into the bars of the cage," Yonker wrote.
She said a female diver trapped in the top part of the cage with the shark was able to reach the bottom section without being injured by the massive predator.
"Yann's regulator had been knocked out of his mouth by the shark, so he retreated to the surface to catch a breath of air and to tell the crew to bring up the cage," Yonker wrote.
Yonker's footage shows a massive shark swimming outside the cage just before the divers ascended, squeezing past the shark to reach the surface.
She said the crew then set about freeing the shark from the cage.
"After a few failed attempts, they tied a rope around her tail, lowered the cage back into the water, and tried to pull her out backwards. Her gills were pressed against the cage bars, so dive master Peter went into the cage and pressed on her gills, which freed the shark and she swam away," she wrote.
The incident, which was captured on video from multiple angles by the divers, didn't result in any injuries, the divers said.
A similar incident that also took place recently off Guadalupe Island involved only one diver being trapped inside a cage with a shark, which was able to swim out the top of the cage on its own when it was opened by the crew. The video, which shows the diver emerge unscathed after the shark, went viral this month.
