As Adam Smith sermonized — at least we vaguely recollect it was Smith — commerce can birth unusual schemes, and the market will inevitably push such commerce into areas both logical and stunningly foolish. Which brings us to Shark Alley, and the waters off South Africa's Dyer Island. Here, just beyond the teeming, crying hordes of sunstruck Cape fur seals, is the far frontier of something that might be called risk enterprise: perhaps the most dangerous chunk of ocean on earth, a spot made more treacherous through human industry. Dyer Island is the place to go if you want to do some aquatic mingling — for whatever reason — with great white sharks. Moreover, it seems to be a place where anyone with a blowtorch and a passably seaworthy boat can weld together a shark cage, hang a shingle, and begin wooing tourists. Little diving experience required, few regulations heeded, no promises made.

In almost 21 years of reporting for this magazine, editor-at-large Tim Cahill has gained much perspective on measured risk, sheer folly, and the occasional dissimilitude between them. Thus when he traveled to South Africa to see the Dyer Island frenzy firsthand, Cahill took the long view. "For some people, diving in these circumstances can be the experience of a lifetime," he says. "And for some it's eventually going to be the last experience of a lifetime." A scuba veteran, Cahill had never dived amid great whites, though he has descended into shark-infested waters a number of times — both in and out of diving cages. And yes, he says, "you can certainly get nipped." But as evidenced by his story on the great whites of Shark Alley — and by the accompanying roundup of notable shark attacks from around the globe — there's a significant difference between courting danger and taunting it.

With this month's cover story, Cahill takes a brief hiatus from his regular gig: writing our Out There column, which he originated in 1981, wrote until 1989, and returned to this past January. "After that nine-year break, my Out There well has filled back up again," Cahill says. "I've got hundreds of stories that I haven't written yet — which isn't to say that I haven't told them already."

"I wish I could say I grew up in Fiji, where we caught sharks with our bare hands," says senior editor Mike Grudowski, whose fish-bites-man almanac, "The Shark Blotter," accompanies Cahill's report. "But Jaws was my closest encounter." Denver-based Grudowski has contributed to Outside since 1986, when he joined the magazine as an intern.

"It's all about access," David Rakoff confides, explaining how he got good quote for his portrait of mega star Bart the Bear. Not merely a chronicler of the stars, Rakoff has also tangled with the business end of a script. "Most recently," he offers, "I played a modeling agent on As the World Turns." Yet the part-time thespian retains a becoming modesty: "As it turns out, I'm a deeply uncompelling camera presence."

"Flying is incredibly casual here," says contributing editor Daniel Coyle, who profiled Alaskan bush pilot Paul Claus. "You can go wherever you want, land wherever you want. All my friends have had their licenses since they were 15." An Anchorage native who now lives within spitting distance of the Homer airport, Coyle plans not to learn to fly himself. "There are a lot of creative ways you can kill yourself in an airplane in Alaska," he says.

After experiencing the rigors of Florida's International Performance Institute, Andrew Tilin is seeking what he calls "the Greg LeMond within" in preparation for this month's Leadville 100 mountain-biking epic in Colorado. "I consider myself fit — or if not fit, I know how to get fit," says Tilin, who formerly edited the magazine's Bodywork section. "But my ideas were definitely changed at IPI." Tilin, who also contributed a review of trail running shoes this month, lives near Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Los Angeles-based photographer Craig Cameron Olsen, a frequent Outside contributor, is also enjoying residual effects from his stay at IPI's fitness boot camp. "They're sending me one of those big Physio Balls," he reports. "The program there is all about balance, and I relate to that because of my snowboarding background." It seems that globe-trotting Olsen totes his board on most shoots. His on-the-road regimen? "Travel light. Stay with people. Drink lots of wine."

Bucky McMahon, who covered the sailing mania that ensued when the Whitbread race docked in Baltimore, captained his own sleek black vessel while tubing down Florida's Ichetucknee River on assignment for Outside last summer. The Tallahassean lived and surfed for a time in a Puerto Rico village but saw few sails: "It was more a powerboating-from-the-Dominican-Republic-and-abandoning-the-boat-on-the-beach kind of scene.