Dozens of sharks spotted cruising in shallow water
Aerial photos showing dozens of sharks just off Matarangi Beach might surprise some people.
But Whitianga resident Philip Hart often flies over the water and says seeing sharks is normal, with some just 50 to 100 metres away from surfers and swimmers.
Yet the fear-inducing predators are more interested in fish, he says.
Hart recently took aerial images, which show groups of bronze whalers – measuring about 1m to 2.5m long – and hammerhead sharks just off the popular and placid Coromandel Peninsula beach.
He owns his small aeroplane, as do several of his friends, and he said they often take others up to show them the coastline and see some sharks, whales and dolphins.
Seeing sharks this time of year was very common at the Whangapoua Harbour entrance, Hart said, and they didn’t tend to move around much.
The bronze whalers were more common to see and although Hart had seen hammerhead sharks in the area before, he had never seen such a big group.
‘‘The sharks [I see] they don’t look like they are looking for people.’’
Department of Conservation shark expert Clinton Duffy has said at this time of year bronze whalers move into shallow coastal water, including inlets, harbours and beaches.
‘‘They’re a big shark – the females can get up to three metres long and between 180 and 200kg – but they are typically not aggressive towards people.’’
This summer has been busy in New Zealand for shark sightings, with Pauanui’s beach closed at the weekend due to multiple sharks being spotted in the water.
The spate of sightings follows the death of Kaelah Marlow, who died after being attacked by a shark at Waihi Beach on Thursday.
Hart said the number of sharks he had seen recently was nomore than previous years, although the sighting of hammerhead sharks was a bit more rare.
‘‘They are perfectly normal, they don’t normally attack people. A friend of mine found a dead hammerhead shark on Matarangi Beach in December, that was a big one.’’
Duffy said there had been one fatal attack by a bronze whaler in 1976 at Te Kaha and that was on a spear fisherman who was lifting speared fish into a boat.
‘‘They don’t typically attack people, but they will become aggressive towards spear fisherman in particular when there is struggling fish in the water – but it can’t be ruled out completely.
‘‘They are a large shark and you have to treat them with respect and treat them being potentially dangerous.’’
Other sharks seen near the shore around Bay of Plenty include hammerheads and thresher sharks.
‘‘Neither which typically present risk to human beings unless people have caught them and are handling them,’’ Duffy said.
Great white sharks are seen fairly regularly in Bay of Plenty, with four seen in the Bowentown channel before Christmas by fisherman.
‘‘Most of them are small – about 21⁄ metres or less – but there was
2 one larger great white around three metres long that was seen in the channel at Bowentown.’’