Shark diaries: August 2007

Dear Ultimate Animal Friend

We have been really busy so I have incorporated July and August into one letter.

This months’ newsletter is somewhat bittersweet. Firstly Rob and I would like to introduce our latest sharkie to you. Adam Lawrence was born on the Friday the 3rd of August. We are all well, but exhausted from the lack of sleep as Adam likes to keep us up all night.

We want to focus this month on drumlines. A drumline is a baited hook that is attached to a floating drum which is anchored. It kills hundreds of sharks each year.

These pictures where taken by workers of the Natal Sharks Board in June 2007. As shark lovers we are totally opposed to this brutal and senseless killing of a protected species. We need your support to stop this senseless killing in the name of tourism. It actually makes us ill and very angry to look at these pictures. Sharks mean so much to us and we have spent years trying to promote the sharks and educate the public about them. So much for protection of an endangered species!

The other issue I would like to highlight is a very incorrect statement made on Larry King Live, by Les Shroud. Les is the host of Survivor Man which is a show in the Discovery Channel. When asked about our sharks breaching in False Bay, he commented:

STROUD: "They're (the great white sharks) actually stopping. They found that since doing experiments where they were using fake seals to film this and in some people capitalize on it, but from the tourism perspective, the sharks have learned that they can't eat this stuff and they've stopped doing it. They're actually slowing down. They do not see it anywhere near as much as you did when they first discovered it."

This extract come directly from the transcript. It is totally untrue and unfounded, and he has no idea of what he is taking about. As far as we are aware, he has never even been to False Bay, and we do not know where he gets his misinformation from. We spend more than 150 days at sea each year, in False Bay and False Bay is a protected area. We specialize in taking film crews, scientists and shark lovers out to sea, to view this amazing and unique behaviour. This unique behaviour only happens for a few months of the year (June, July and August being the premier months). Rest assured that the sharks have not been conditioned, and the natural predations and breaching are still taking place like nowhere else on earth.

July was a good month for shark sightings. We had quite a few different sharks around the boat every day, and it was also great to see “old friends”, returning year after year. The breaching behaviour was a little slow to start, but picked up nicely. The weather played its part well, but we still had to cancel 10 trips during the month. The shark activity around the boat was very good, so July was an excellent month for diving.

August was a really busy month for us. With me having the baby, and Rob being almost exclusively booked for the whole month on a film shoot, it left no room for anything else. The film crew we had with us for August, was Galatee. They are a very professional French film crew , who are currently busy with a film called “Oceans”. It is the second year that they are with us, and they where looking for a very specific shot of the sharks breaching and hunting behaviour. They filmed with 35mm film, which is a very high speed film, and allows for very limited time to get the “shot”. This is because it is designed for big screen, cinematic quality. If you love nature, I would highly recommend watching “Winged Migration”, (which left me breathless); it will give you an idea of the top quality of their work. We where very pleased that they did manage to get the shots they where looking for.

Then August saw the Southern right and Humped Back whales come back into the bay. This means that it is now almost the end of shark season; we expect another 2 weeks of activity before the sharks quiet down around the 15th of September. For those wanting to see whales, there is a new company called “Cape Town Whale Watching”, that is running trips from Kalk Bay harbour, which is a real bonus, as they are only 40 min from Cape Town so there is no need to travel for hours to get up close and personal with the whales.

That is all from us for this month.

Cheers
Karen and Rob Lawrence
African Shark Eco-Charters