‘You stand on the beach and see a dorsal fin go past’
THE NUMBER of white sharks in False Bay has increased significantly in the past 30 to 40 years, leading to more attacks and sightings of the apex predators, according to a city council environment official.
Since 2000, there have been 18 shark attacks in Cape Town, five of them fatal, and most taking place among bathers which had been traumatic, Gregg Oelofse, the council’s head of environmental policy and strategy, said yesterday.
For 40 years, people in Fish Hoek used to swim across the bay without seeing a shark, but now that has changed, Oelofse told the third Southern African Shark and Ray Symposium in Simon’s Town.
“Now you can stand on the beach and see a dorsal fin go past, so something has shifted,” he said. “And when these animals come into the bay they are massive, you can’t miss them. They come in really shallow.”
Stressing the trauma of shark attacks on swimmers, he said: “Suddenly someone had literally been eaten right where they had swum on a daily basis for 30 years.”
Even so, he stressed, the chances of being attacked are very remote.
“A person would have to surf for 154 years, 24 hours a day, seven days a week to be bitten by a shark. But the point is that those stats mean nothing as it’s fear that drives the change.”
Oelofse said that if champion surfer Mick Fanning had succumbed to his injuries after being attacked by a shark in Jeffreys Bay, then it could have had serious implications for South Africa.
He also expressed concern about the spate of documentaries on great white sharks in False Bay, saying they were often made recklessly.
He said he’d seen documentaries on television or uploaded to YouTube where people were paddle boarding around sharks or touching them. “The onus on people who work with sharks is to maintain a sense of respect for what these animals are and what they represent.”
Oelofse said public confidence in shark cage diving needed to be restored. “They need an impeccable image and I’m not sure they have that.”
On dealing with shark attacks, Oelofse said he had learnt over the years to provide the public with information as quickly as possible to prevent speculation and conspiracy theories.
“With one of the shark attacks, information was put out that the shark spotters were told to step down because they wanted the attack to happen to raise funds for the organisation.
“Another common myth is the rogue 8-metre submarine shark which lives around Simon’s Town and his teeth are getting weaker so he is eating people.”
Sarah Waries of Shark Spotters spoke about the success of a shark exclusion barrier at Fish Hoek which was introduced two years ago. It is 350m long and covers an area which is the size of three international football fields.
“It was specifically designed to have minimal environmental impact and be able to adapt to changing weather conditions,” Waries said.
It’s erected and retrieved daily and monitored by the shark spotters.
They also have a team on standby to herd out any whales or dolphins that enter the bay while the net is in use. Since the programme started, they have had 79 sightings of white sharks in Fish Hoek, 39 of which were when the net was being used.
Paul von Blerck, a researcher at the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board, said a pilot project at Glencairn Beach, which used an electronic cable to create an “invisible curtain” repelling sharks, had run into difficulties when the equipment was struck by tons of kelp.
However, he hoped to try again.