Sharks Attacked!: TNT, Shark Nets and a Brief History of South AfricaÕs Management of One of the WorldÕs Most Misunderstood Creatures
Overnight, a symphony of opposing winds and currents had whipped the Indian Ocean off South Africa’s Wild Coast into a frenzy. After a final camera check, I roll backward off the boat, descending into the sea. Instantly, the maelstrom of frothing water on the surface dissipates and reveals an animated puzzle of dark shapes. Too impatient to wait for the water to clear further, I take a deep breath and descend through the white foam to find myself just meters away from a convoy of bronze whaler sharks, its beginning and end stretched far beyond the limits of my vision. Like an army on the march, shark after shark swims past. Running short of breath, I start finning to the surface when a large shark breaks rank to investigate me. She circles me a few times, bumps the camera for good measure and, having satisfied her curiosity, rejoins the traffic. Back at the surface, I look south and see thousands of Cape gannets raining from the sky. Meter-high spouts erupt where their arrow-shaped bodies pierce, missile like, into the sea. I swim toward the action and am greeted by a sight that I have waited most of my life to witness.
A pulsating house-sized shoal of sardines is being attacked by the bronze whaler sharks. It’s the Holy Grail of underwater photography—a large, predator-infested baitball in clear water. Clutching my camera, I navigate the layers of wildly snapping hunters to the baitball’s center, where two exceptionally large sharks hang motionlessly. When I get to within just a few feet, they suddenly erupt into life and burst, jaws open, through the wall of sardines. They push past me with mouths so full of fish that sardine heads and tails stick out just like clothes from an overstuffed suitcase. In just 30 short minutes, the armada of sharks, aided by dolphins and gannets, trims the baitball down to the last sardine and quickly moves on, leaving me in the company of millions of sinking fish scales twinkling in the shards of sunlight from the surface.
I have had the good fortune to photograph and research sharks in southern Africa for more than a decade. I have had sea kayak and underwater encounters with great white sharks, a species that over the years I have come to know well as a curious, cautious and highly intelligent predator, nothing like the man-eating monster fish so frequently portrayed in film and books. In the waters off the west coast, I have marveled at the great diversity of endemic shy and cat sharks and accompanied them camera in hand as they hunted crabs and small fish among the tangles of grand undersea kelp forests. Off South Africa’s east coast, the tiger shark thrones the top of the food chain, growing up to 5 meters in length and reputed to eat anything. My encounters have revealed this creature to be a remarkably placid, relaxed and tolerant photographic subject. In total, more than 150 species of sharks occur in southern Africa’s seas, inhabiting coral reefs, kelp forests, offshore seamounts and almost every other marine habitat imaginable. I know of no other place in the world where one can encounter such a variety and abundance of sharks with such great ease, and it is no coincidence that I call the southern tip of Africa home.
Southern Africa is the meeting place of two ocean giants—the cold Benguela of the Atlantic Ocean and the warm Agulhas current of the Indian Ocean. They clash fiercely at the continent’s southern tip, dividing the region into two contrasting marine ecosystems that rank among the richest, most biologically diverse and oceanographically complex on the planet. The Atlantic Ocean, with its awesome productivity and abundance of animal and plant biomass, borders the subcontinent’s western flank, while the Indian Ocean that lies on the east has an ecological signature of great biodiversity. The southern African coast twists and turns for well over 6,500 kilometers, passing through the territories of three countries: Namibia, South Africa and Mozambique. From east to west, the seas of southern Africa stretch from the edge of the east African tropics to the cool, temperate waters of the Cape and on to the southern border of tropical west Africa. This incredibly steep gradient of latitudinal change has led to the creation of one of the most productive and varied marine environments on Earth...
