Shark diaries: June 2009

Dear Ultimate Animal friend,

Shark cage diving and breaching is one of the highlights and “must do’s” for anyone coming to Cape Town. The perception of Great White has changed from hatred of a monster to one of awe and respect of the magnificent apex predator it is. However, we still have a long way to go in raising public awareness to get people to “re-think the shark”.

June was a fun month, filled with excitement.

We had three film crew’s with us, and a highlight for the crew was for them to chat to “survivor man” Les Shroud. He was presenting a show on the most dangerous Great White Shark spots around the World.

Robert Jennings, one of our skippers, started to try his hand at blogging, and some of his blog posts are very funny. His highlight was working with a presenter called Charles, a Special Forces Marine. Jennings kept hoping that Charles would give us a grunt (who-ha) and a marching song, as they do in those Hollywood movies.

His show was on the different feeding behaviors of the Great Whites around the world. On one of the days it turned interesting when we had to use squid, kelp and a whole tuna to see which the sharks preferred. To our disbelief the kelp was the first to be taken and eaten in a frenzy of tail thrashing, proving that the Great White goes for anything that resembles a seal in form shape.

With the Lions Rugby tour here in South Africa’s, supporters flooded the Cape, consuming most of our beer each week-end. I was under strict instructions not to book any afternoon shark trips when there was a game scheduled. Rob and our crew did their bit, wearing their green and gold jerseys, and beanies to sea on those days and then dashing to the pub after the trip not to miss a seat.

Rob normally does a bit of filming for “stock footage”, but lately has been taking photographs, and this month he took some nice shark photos, which I have posted on our website and blog.

The shark activity this month was very good. We had really good predatory activity and breaching on almost every day. It was only later in the month, when we had the biggest storm of the year come in, that the water was dirty and for a few days after that the shark activity was down.

Well, we are now busy with another film shoot with Jeff Kurr, producing for the discovery channel. They are busy using aerial helicopters from our boat and so I will blog about that shortly and add it to Jul’s newsletter.

Until next month then, kiss a few sharks for us,
Rob and Karen Lawrence