Cape Town shark talk

[Agent 99]

Talk: False Bay's Flying Great Whites and Their Kin



Went to Cape Town for a talk on sea life in False Bay last Thursday evening, given by photographer Chris Fallows. He's taken some great shots of seals evading capture by the great whites, including some spectacular breaches by the sharks. Sometimes the sharks can clear the water by as much as 3m. And it's not just the seals that have battle scars, many of the sharks have bite marks from the seals as well.

The seals usually go out on fishing trips for days at a time, departing Seal Island with their regular buddies and jostling about to try and not be on the outside of the group or at the tail end. This movement also makes it difficult for the sharks to get them. They tend to get picked off on their return, especially if a younger member of the group has got separated and is returning alone, tired after a few days at sea. In fact 80% of the victims are seals about 6 months to a year or so old (number twos he called them ). You have to feel sorry for the guys. Their survival chances once being tailed by a great white are only 50.5% - amongst the lowest survival odds for any natural predation. A chase typically goes on for 20 minutes or so with lots of ducking, diving and weaving. There were some spectacular shots of the seals diving over shark's backs, jumping back out of the shark's mouth and using their flippers to spring off the lower jaws. A seal can't outdo a shark for speed so it tries to avoid capture by tiring it out.

I couldn't help thinking that the ones who make it must have the most amazing stories to tell, so it must be a bit of a bummer for them when they get back to their regular mates not being able to talk. Or perhaps that what all the honking on Seal Island is really about... "Saw this really big bugger come up behind me, got out of the way at the last second, jumped over his back and took a chunk out of his dorsal fin on my way past, piece of cake!"... "Huh, so what? Saw these massive teeth out of the corner of my eye, thought I was a goner, just got me flippers together in time and bounced off his bottom gnashers!"... "A right couple of clowns you two are, what do you think this is, the bloody circus? Take it from an old bull like me, if really want to make it you need to go for his eyes, never mind the fancy acrobatics!"...

Chris said he'd had some slightly nerve racking moments as well, when seals had used the boat for cover... they also had an incident earlier this year when someone was watching a shark from a cage and a seal came along and jumped into the cage! Chris spent most of the time telling the guy in the cage that he could see something 180 degrees away from the shark...

He had shots of all sorts of sharks; mako, galapagos, white tip, and many more. Also some interesting shots of big game fish (yellowfin tuna, etc) taken whilst snorkelling 20km or so off Cape Point where the warm Aghulas current can make the water 10 degrees warmer than that in False Bay.

He also works with the local fisherman in Muizenberg to encourage them to return sharks caught in their nets back into the sea, and they seem to be keen to cooperate and participate in shark sightings. Pretty amazing when you think that the average fisherman earns between R10k-R20k (£900-£1700) per year and could get a lot of extra money for a shark catch.

Some of you might have seen a documentary several months ago where a local research team installed sensors around Seal Island to track the sharks movement and breaching behaviour. Chris helped with that project. But some time afterwards they found that the sensors laid on the sea bed were actually causing injury to the sharks so they removed the ones they could...

In July he had a team from the BBC accompanying him, including Simon King with a camera that could shoot at a thousand frames a second... they were filming some footage for a sequel to the Blue Planet, to be screened sometime next year.

He was asked about cage diving after the talk and said he didn't have much experience of it but felt it hadn't contributed to the recent increase in shark attacks in South Africa. He pointed out that great white sharks are only given national protection in four areas of the world: Australia, California & Florida, Malta and South Africa & Namibia. It takes about 15 years for a female great white to reach sexual maturity. The decline in numbers of some shark species has been dramatic.

He was a pretty knowledgeable guy and a good speaker. He is able to identify most of the sharks observed around Seal Island individually, and uses photographic records (not tagging) to log them. He had a lot more to say, but I wasn't taking notes... for more of his pictures see www.apexpredators.com.

Here's the one of the flipper bounce...

[Lou]

That is a pretty amazing photo at the end, it is now my wallpaper - just reminds you that it ain't over til it is over!

Thanks for the write-up, sounds liike a superb talk. I shall keep my eyes open over here, just in case he makes it to a dive show or similar. I would like to hear it someday.

Lou