In 1997 we travelled to South Africa to make a series of paintings underwater with one of the most feared and misunderstood predators in the world, the Great White Shark.

With the kind help of the "White Shark Research Institute", we were able to descend in cages and observe these awesome creatures, painting them at extremely close range as they were feeding. For a week we dived every day and saw over 30 sharks, some individuals measuring up to 5 metres in length and 2 tons in weight.

As our understanding of the shark grew we came to realise that they were in fact not the random killers of man that we had been led to believe, but are in fact intelligent and selective feeders. They would often inspect our cage, probing us with their sensitive noses, curious about the alien visitors to their submerged world.

We mounted our handmade papers onto polystyrene boards and used non-toxic water based paints, graphite and oil sticks to paint and draw underwater. We found that the papers would tolerate submersion for up to 2 hours and would remain absorbent and intact throughout this time. Our work was complicated by the constant surge and extreme cold of these unpredictable waters combined with the obvious distress we both felt working so close to these intimidating creatures.

Jaques Cousteau once said that diving in the cages with white sharks filled him with an "unimaginable dread". After a week of diving with the sharks we found our dread began to turn turn to wonder and as we began to relax and focus on our work the beauty and majesty of this remarkable predator became our focus.

Painting the sharks from the surface we floated our paper on large buoyant foam boards, the reverse of which had been covered in dark paint and chum. We were thrilled to see the sharks attack and bite our paintings at regular intervals. We concluded that the silhouette must have resembled a seal, the favourite prey of the Great White.

As artists who make all our work in wild places we endeavour to take a mark or trace of creatures that are here now, but may not be for much longer. Great White Sharks have received endangered species status from C.I.T.I.E.S. Due to the WSRI pioneering work in education and tagging programs, it would appear that in South Africa at least, the Great White Shark has a good chance of survival.

The shark bite photo was created in collaboration with reportage photographer Greg Williams.

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