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 In the last ten years there have been a
number of interactions between paddlers and sharks off the South African
coast. This article describes the
incidents and debunks some of the myths about the animals. Paddling is a much safer sport than most – in
spite of the emotion and fear associated with sharks.
Kwa-Zulu
Natal Incidents
On November 6, 2003 Gary Albers and Quinton
Rutherford were about two kilometres out to sea paddling a double surf ski from
Umgababa to Karridene when a shark hit their ski violently from directly
underneath.
Although the ski was badly damaged and
became instantly waterlogged, the two men were able to paddle the wreckage back
to shore. The ski was a total write-off.
At the time the ski was hit the two men had
been near flocks of feeding birds and they speculated that the shark had been
attracted to shoals of fish in the water.
Moral of the story: leave a wide berth between your ski and flocks of
feeding seabirds.
Another double ski was repeatedly bitten on
the tail by a shark that was later identified as a Mako from teeth broken off
and left embedded in the ski. (Editor:
if any Natal
readers know who was involved in this incident and when it took place, please
let us know.)
The third incident involved a single-ski
paddler who had stopped outside the surf to wait for a companion. To keep his balance while he waited he stuck
his feet over the side – and a shark bit one his feet, severely lacerating it.
East London “Attack” – Shark attacked by paddler…
On 9 November 2006, Richard Tebbutt was
paddling on the Nahoon River near East London
when he spotted an angler on shore battling to land a “big fish”. Trying to helpful, Richard paddled over and
jumped onto the fish – only to find that he was wrestling with a 1.5m Zambesi
Shark. The shark, clearly unimpressed,
retaliated leaving Richard with lacerations that required 50 stitches…
Cape Town: Three “Interactions” in
Four Years
Three skis have been damaged in Cape waters by Great White Sharks in the last four
years. Opinions differ as to the motives
of the sharks involved.
Shark researchers say that the sharks were
not “predating” on the skis i.e. were not intent on attack, but were more
likely investigating them. Problem is
that when sharks “feel” with jaws capable of exerting a force of 3 tonnes per
square cm, whatever is being “felt” tends to end up being somewhat damaged.
The intriguing thing about the Cape incidents is that they all occurred with about a
kilometre of Sunny Cove, just outside Fish Hoek. In fact two of them took place within a few
hundred metres of each other.
 The Cape Peninsula
 Detail of Fish Hoek/Sunny Cove
Paul
Mauger
Friday, 13 September 2002, 15h30
Sea conditions: Flat calm, water so clear
he could see the bottom
Ski: White Fenn Mako with red tips
Location of damage: stern bitten right off,
from behind rudder
 Paul Mauger and the sawn off ski (Photo: Andrew Ingram, The Argus)
Paul Mauger was paddling on his own from
Fish Hoek towards Simonstown when “suddenly something crashed into the back of
the ski and I was knocked into the water.” He surfaced to find a shark chewing
on the piece of ski that it had bitten off – the rearmost half metre broken off
from just behind the rudder.
Paul was holding onto his waterlogged ski
with his legs hanging down in the water when the shark swam towards him. “I thought my legs were gone,” he said, “but
it swam underneath me and disappeared.”
Now Paul was faced with a dilemma: should
he stick with his waterlogged ski or should he swim the 100m or so to
shore? He chose the latter. “…well, at no stage of my dash for safety was
there anything remotely resembling a ripple or a splash off my back. Totally
smooth swim all the way to shore.”
Paul was back in the water shortly after
the episode but kept suffering whiplash injuries whenever there was a splash in
the water behind him…
Trevor
Wright
Saturday, 1 October 2005, 15h00
Sea conditions: “Weather was overcast,
slight offshore wind, sea visibility not good.”
Ski: White Kayak Centre Dorado with orange
tips
Location of damage: bow, punctures from
teeth, deck crushed
 Trevor Wright ((Photo: Andrew Ingram, The Argus)
Trevor Wright set off with Alan Weston,
intending to paddle from Fish Hoek to Simonstown and back. Minutes after setting off, Trevor felt “a
hell of a knock” on the back of ski. He
says he knew immediately that it was a shark and he yelled to Alan.
Alan saw the shark come up vertically to
bite the bow of Trevor’s ski. After
apparently losing its grip, it sank back only to come up a second time, this
time causing an audible crunching sound as it bit into the fibreglass,
“thrashing its head around a bit”.
“I actually don’t remember the shark’s head
coming up out of the water, it was just suddenly there. I don't even recall seeing it biting the nose
[of the ski]. I remember only the shark looking directly at me,” Trevor said,
“I remember looking right down its throat, literally. I also remember how ugly
its teeth and gums were.”
 Trevor Wright's ski (Photo: Ian Klopper, NSRI)
Trevor managed to stay on the ski by
bracing with his paddle. “It didn’t
shoot up and grab the nose, Alan says it came up quite slowly. I think the bite
was a taster. Theoretically, I should have fallen off, I can't explain why I
didn't. Probably adrenalin.”
 Damage to Trevor's ski (Photo: Ian Klopper, NSRI)
The shark then simply disappeared and the
two men paddled straight to the rocks and got out of the water.
Trevor said he did paddle in the area
again. “It was awkward however, paddling
with one blade in the water, and one on the rocks.” However after the recent incidents he said
he’d not be going near Sunny Cove again.
Lyle
Maasdorp
Friday, 28 July 2006, 16h40
Sea conditions: 10kt SE wind, slight chop
on the water, murky
Ski: White Fenn Mako, plain white
Location of damage: large crescent shaped
hole in hull just in front of rudder, rudder crushed, shaft pushed out of hull,
teeth marks behind rudder
 Lyle Maasdorp and his (borrowed) ski (Photo: Rob Mousley)
Lyle was with four other paddlers just
beyond Sunny Cove station when the back of his ski was thrust into the air by a
shark that bit into the hull just in front of the rudder.
As the shark sank back into the water, its
weight pulled the back of the ski under water.
Lyle slid out of the back of the cockpit and landed in the water with
his arm over the shark’s back.
 Detailed view of the damage (Photo: Rob Mousley)
In a moment the shark was gone and Lyle was
back on the ski face down trying to paddle in to the rocks with his arms. One of his companions, Anthony Pearce,
paddled across and took Lyle to shore on the back of his ski.
The group paddled back to Fish Hoek as close
to shore as they could get while Lyle hitched a ride in a passing car. Lyle
later took the club rubber duck out and fetched his ski.
“Cull
the sharks”
Surfers and paddlers responded in various
ways to the July 2006 incidents. (Apart
from Lyle’s adventure, within a few weeks a lifesaver had his foot bitten off
by a Great White that joined in a rescue exercise at Muizenberg and a lucky
surfer had his leash bitten off by an inquisitive shark near St. James.)
Some called for sharks to be culled, saying
that the Great White population had “exploded” since 1991 when the Great White
became a protected species. Others said
that humans venturing into the shark’s domain must simply take their chances.
Some accused cage diving operators of
changing the sharks’ behaviour by chumming and feeding the sharks.
Myths
v Facts
What do we know about these animals? First, the population of Great White Sharks
off the South African coast has not “exploded”.
From the numbers caught off the east coast in nets, scientists are
reasonably certain that the population, at best, is no longer decreasing.
Tagging programs have shown that sharks are
more mobile than previously thought. One
specimen was tracked moving from Gansbaai up to Mozambique,
and another even crossed the Indian Ocean to Australia and back.
In False Bay, the sharks tend to congregate
around Seal Island each year between May and
September where they prey on seals. They then disperse and some move to inshore
waters in the bay until December or even later.
However, they are present in the bay all the year round, and there is a
greater concentration of Great White sharks in False Bay than anywhere else
along the Cape Peninsula.
There are no reliable accounts of a single
shark becoming a “rogue animal” or a serial attacker of humans. Great White sharks don’t prey on humans. No-one knows why, except that there are other
species such as the sea otter that sharks also appear to ignore. Furthermore when they do attack people, they
don’t usually eat them; they tend to “bite and let go” which supports the
theory that most interactions are “investigations” rather than
“predations”. Great Whites investigate
both by bumping objects with their noses and bodies or by mouthing them. Most incidents are probably not the result of
“mistaken identity” but rather the result of the shark making a conscious
decision to examine the ski/surfboard/surfer.
Of course no-one wants to be “investigated” by something that uses a
mouthful of razor sharp teeth capable of a bite pressure of some 3 tonnes per
square centimetre.
What’s becoming increasingly clear is given
their varying predatory habits the Great Whites are intelligent and adaptable. They have acute senses and can detect
smell/taste, vibration, electric fields and sound. Their sight is good both
under and above water: they sometimes “spy-hop”, sticking their heads out of
the water in order to examine floating objects.
Finally, recent research at Seal Island,
False Bay has shown that over time, sharks
stop responding to chum - the opposite result to that expected if sharks were
positively being conditioned by chumming vessels.
Why
are there more interactions and sightings?
There seems to be no single answer, but
rather a combination of factors: for example, increased numbers of people in
the water – many more surfers, divers, paddlers – and improved wet suit
technology that results in surfers and divers spending more time in the water.
It’s known too that over-fishing is causing
depletion of the sharks’ natural food sources, which include other sharks and
fish. This may be forcing the Great
Whites further inshore as they find it more difficult to find food.
Part of the reason for the increased
numbers of sightings may be explained simply by the fact that more people
(including the professional spotters at Fish Hoek and Muizenberg) are looking
for the sharks.
So
what’s to be done?
The two extreme views are:
a)
Leave the sharks alone; it’s
their environment. Humans have a choice
about where they choose to indulge in recreation. The sharks have no choice
about where they live.
b)
Kill the sharks. They’re too
dangerous to allow in areas where there are humans.
Is there a middle way?
Shark nets are not practical in Cape waters for several reasons (including the presence
of kelp and whales) and in any case they have a severe negative impact on the
environment.
“Culling” of sharks is not likely to be
effective because of the mobility of the animals which also usually makes it
impossible to identify the culprit responsible for any particular
incident. Seal Island
is a short swim from Muizenberg and killing one, or two, or six Great Whites
will not make any difference to the likelihood of encounters between shark and
human.
Allowing the wholesale slaughter of the
sharks - “apex predators” at the top of the food chain - while likely to reduce
the chance of human/shark interactions, would have a major impact on the
ecology of both the bay and the open ocean.
And in a world where species are being
wiped out at an ever increasing rate, slaughtering sharks is morally
indefensible. So what do we do?
The City of Cape Town has expanded the number of “shark
spotters”. Paid spotters use binoculars
to scan the waters off bathing beaches.
If they see a shark approaching the beach, they activate a siren to
signal bathers to get out of the water.
A system of flags lets bathers know if spotters are on duty.
This seems to work quite well when the
water is clear – but when lifesaver Achmat Hassiem was bitten, he was in an
area too far away for the shark spotters to monitor. The water nearby was murky, making it
unlikely that the shark would have been seen anyway.
Hard
choices
Suppose you just can’t bring yourself to
stay away from False Bay? Here are some safety tips:
-
Don’t paddle alone. Believe it or not, sharks are usually timid
creatures and are less likely to approach a group of skis or kayaks. Also if you’re in a group and something does happen the others in the group may
be able to help.
-
Stay away from flocks of diving
sea birds. Predators follow shoals of
fish.
-
Avoid paddling in twilight
conditions. Most predations at Seal Island
take place in the early morning.
-
Use a Shark Shield (check them
out on www.sharkshield.com).
Is
it safe to paddle?
Although logically and intellectually I
know that the likelihood of meeting a Great White is extremely remote, I’m an
imaginative, illogical kind of a creature and I’ll probably avoid Sunny Cove in
the foreseeable future unless I’m paddling with a big group – but that hasn’t
stopped me from doing about twenty Millers runs this season. (The Millers Run goes from Millers Point
southwest of Simonstown across the bay to Fish Hoek. One tends to go close to Sunny Cove when
entering Fish Hoek bay.)
Put it this way – there were over 18,500 homicides and who knows how many deaths
in car accidents in South
Africa last year. There have never been any paddler deaths due to shark attack. To me that says I’m a lot safer in the water,
(even off Sunny Cove!) than on dry land.
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I would however like to make one comment.
The "myth" on the GW shark population explosion cannot be so easily disproved. There is an almost complete lack of hard data on GW shark populations. The scientists use what they have, which is the catch return data for the nets of the Natal Parks Board. The nets catch juvenile GW sharks and they extrapolate this data to determine the actual population for all areas. Three assumptions are made, first that the numbers of juveniles caught is in proportion to the total juvenile population, second that the juvenile population approximates the number of adults, and third that the False Bay population will track the Natal population. So in effect they say that since the number of baby GW sharks caught in the Natal nets has increased by only 1.6% since 1991, the adult population in False Bay has not increased by more than this amount! That is quite a leap, and one that is not accepted by all.
In fact it is in direct conflict with the observations of many long term experienced divers, surfers and other "watermen".
The scientists ascribe the increases in sightings to changes in the distribution patterns of the existing GWs.
Even if you don't accept the above, humour me for a moment and assume that there has been a significant increase in the number of GWs. This begs the question of what could or should be done about it? Any measures (electronic barriers etc) taken other than culling (and assume this is not an option) would only benefit the inshore users. Part of the attraction of paddling is that surfskiers venture far from the mainstream areas.
Food for thought?