Bold dive into Shark Alley
24-year-old Kiwi facing personal fears to help raise awareness of creatures’ plight
Ayoung Aucklander is about to jump in the water with sharks off the South African coast, in a bid to raise awareness about threats facing the big ocean predators.
Shruthi Vijayakumar says she’s still coming to grips with the idea of putting herself metres away from sharks but thinks it’s a necessary exercise if she wants to highlight their plight to others.
The 24-year-old is among a handful of young people around the world invited by Swiss adventurer Mike Horn to join a two-week programme near Capetown in October.
Vijayakumar, a blogger for news site The Huffington Post, and the rest of the group will spend the time onboard Horn’s boat Pangaea, diving and taking part in a local scientific monitoring programme.
The voyage would cover a range of activities, from learning about shark finning and other pressures on habitats, to getting up close with them in the water.
It would be based at South Africa’s world-renowned “Shark Alley” — a sea channel off the cape coast with a large fur seal colony that attracts many shark species, including huge great whites.
“I have to say that I’m not the bravest person, or someone who loves sharks, [so] the experience will be a great opportunity for my personal development.” Vijayakumar wanted to overcome her own fear of sharks: something that had grown with their depiction in popular culture, most recently in horror film The Shallows. “We tend to see them as these maneating scary creatures that are no good,” she said.
“So the aim is to encounter them first-hand, appreciate the important role they play in our eco-systems, and then share our stories with the rest of the world.”
She felt the messages she’d come home with would be particularly relevant to New Zealand, which is also globally renowned for its shark species diversity and cutting-edge tracking and tagging programmes.
Adventure is nothing new to Vijayakumar, who has spent weeks in the Amazon jungle with Horn on a previous trip, and once sailed a kayak built from plastic bottles down the Whanganui River to highlight New Zealand’s plastic waste pollution.
“I’ve always had a heart for environmental issues [but] never thought that would mean diving with sharks.”