Shark diaries: January 2007

Dear Ultimate Animal friend,

January is the low season for the great white sharks. We had lots of bookings for the month, but unfortunately most of them where cancelled due to very poor weather conditions. The notorious South Easter wind of the Cape did not stop blowing, and it frustrated us, and our guests not to be able to go to sea. When we did manage to "set sail", we had some great trips.

The Great White Shark trips around Seal Island, False Bay

Overall we had 8 trips during January and we had 9 great white shark sightings at Seal Island. We had 3 cage dives during these trips with water visibility of 10/10. We saw 2 predations.

Seal Island was full of seal pups, due to being the end of the pupping season, and the little pups were super cute. There where also a large number of penguins at the Island.

We were busy with a film shoot at that time with Crossing the Line Productions from Ireland. They managed to get some very good shark shots. They will be bringing out a documentary around April, so watch out for us then.

We saw common and bottle nose dolphins in the bay, and on 5 of the trips there where huge shoals of yellow tail. We also where lucky to see a small Brydes whale as well as a hammerhead shark.

Rob also spotted a European Storm Petrel. This is a very rare pelagic bird sighting to be seen so close to the Island and our guests where very lucky to see it. We did two birding trips.

Please see the information on Pelagic Birds for details of these trips.

The Pelagic Shark Trips. (Blue Water Predator Trips)

Because of the weather we only managed Blue Water Trips. The weather was very kind to us on those days and the water was super blue and we had very good visibility. We had some good sightings of Blue Sharks and a few Mako sharks. We saw lots of yellow fin tuna and our guests caught a few on our catch and release system.

So to end off, for a quiet out of season month, we had excellent sightings and where very happy to have seen so much in the bay.

In summary a list of our sightings for January 2007:

• Great White Sharks
• Blue Sharks
• Mako Sharks
• Yellow Fin Tuna
• Blue nose Dolphins
• Yellow Tail
• Small Brydes Whale
• Hammer Head Shark
• European Storm Petrel
• Seals
• Penquins

That is all for this month

Rob and Karen Lawrence
African Shark Eco-Charters