Paddlers and hippos face off in Great Fish River

HIPPOS which have left the Great Fish Nature Reserve threatened a group of weekend paddlers, forcing one of the group to fire a dart gun.

Eastern Cape Parks and Tourism Agency (ECPTA) chief marketing officer Nopasika Mxunyelwa confirmed that 10 hippos were in the lower reaches of the Great Fish, but these had been reduced to four by professionals, using “appropriate animal removal methods”.

Two of the eight East London paddlers whose homeward journey on the Great Fish River was blocked by the pod of aggressive hippos on Saturday opted to spend Sunday night in the forest.

On Sunday afternoon, their families contacted the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) in Port Alfred asking them to carry out the search.

The NSRI reported an aerial sighting of the paddlers stuck about 10km upriver from the mouth with no food or water.

By Sunday night the entire group had been located, said the NSRI.

“They contacted their families and said they were cornered by the hippos, but when we got there to rescue them, two said they wanted to spend the night there,” said NSRI spokesperson Craig Lambinon.

Leading member of the group Kelly Janse van Rensburg said the events of the night were blown out of proportion and insisted they all made it back safely.

He said the group had encountered hippos as paddlers were trying to make camp, which halted their progress.

“We met pods of hippos along the way so that stunted our progress.”

The group, consisting of three women and five men, used a dart gun to scare off a hippo that attacked them, he said.

ECPTA has been facing a hippo conservation crisis in the past few months which has seen one hippo shot dead as it had taken up residence in a dam near a school in a village not far from the Great Fish River Nature Reserve.