May 2007 SHARK BYTES

Dear Shark Lovers,

We had an overwhelming response to our request for volunteers for a shark experience with us in June so I first want to thank all those that responded. Unfortunately we could only choose 8 people and it was a difficult decision for the film crew.

We started off at the beginning of May seeing very high numbers of great white sharks at Seal Island . In fact this was the earliest in the season I have seen the Island this busy in the 8 years that I have worked here. We really thought that we would be set for an early start with regards to intense predation but in the last ten days the sharks have slowed down a little. We had very good days but also very slow days literally from one day to the next.

Although we have been seeing the odd event at no stage during the month have there been a lot of natural predations (sharks trying to hunt seals). I think that one of the contributing factors is that there has not been much seal movement and of course if there is no prey the predators cannot feed.

We also had only patchy success with sharks breaching on the decoy but if you have a look on Photo’s of the Month Chris did manage to catch a few good pics.

The highlight for me this month is that we have already recognized a number of sharks from previous years that have yet again returned to Seal Island. The most well known to us is a 3,8 meter (11 foot) male we call “Bob” that we have recorded over the last 4 years. He has a very distinctive dorsal fin and we are able to recognize him immediately. In fact we even had him breach on the decoy.

The second well known shark is a teenage female of 3,4 meters (9 foot). She has a medium sized growth on her mouth and although this is easy to identify she also likes to stay around our boat longer than most sharks. She is also usually pretty relaxed and this gives all on the boat a really good chance to have a close look at her. We have seen her since 2005 and we have given her the name “Bumps”.

The third shark is an almost 4 meter male (13 foot) that we first spotted last season. Unfortunately for this shark he is on the process of losing his dorsal fin. It looks as though it is one of the great white shark that was tagged with a satellite tag in its dorsal fin a number of years ago. It is evident that the tag has failed to fall out. We can see that the dorsal fin is now collapsing around the satellite tag and will in time completely sheer off. To be honest we find this very upsetting especially since it is not often that we record seeing a large male.

There have been a number of other sharks that we do not immediately recognize from previous years but that we have identified during the month. For a number of sharks we recorded them returning to the Island every 7 to 10 days.

Another of our highlights this month was having four very large female sharks visit us at the boat. Last year in the beginning of June we had recorded a higher than normal number of very large sharks and we wonder is this is going to be similar this season. The four large sharks that we have seen have all been in the last 10 days. The first one was 4 meters (13foot) and we observed her on at least 4 different days. The second was just over 4 meters and has half of one of her pectoral fins missing (this is an old injury). Both of these sharks were very interactive around the boat which is a little unusual for large sharks. A lot of the time the bigger sharks will came in, give us a few quick looks while chasing off any smaller sharks in the process, and then leave shortly afterwards. Not the ideal shark for coming up to the boat!

A few days after these two sighting we got even luckier by seeing a 4.5 meter (14 foot) female and a 4.4 meter female on consecutive days. You cannot imagine the sheer girth on a shark this large and the most amazing thing is that they can get much bigger than this! Again both sharks really stayed around the boat and the 4.4 meter spent a good hour with us.

We had another special visitor at Seal Island although this visitor was not a shark. It was a Franklin’s Gull that comes from North America and had somehow found its way far off course to Seal Island. There are usually between 1 and 2 Franklin Gulls spotted annually in South Africa so we were excited about having this special sighting.

We did not manage many pelagic shark trips in May, mainly due to the fact that most of our guests were interested in seeing the great whites. We have not seen any makos on these trips but have had blue sharks up at the boat. Blue sharks are great to free dive with because they are not threatening at all and are curious enough to come in close for an intimate encounter. On one trip we not only had 2 blue sharks to dive with but also three fairly large yellowfin tuna of about 60kgs each. I found the tuna just as exciting to see as the sharks and under the right conditions one can get very close to them in the water.

May has been a good month for cetacean sightings. We have come across large schools of common dolphins both in False Bay and offshore on a number of occasions. We also had a particularly good sighting of a herd of large adult male sperm whales. This was about 10 miles off Cape Point on a beautifully flat calm morning just as the sun was coming up. We were even treated to a spy-hop and tail view as the most curios male came to have a look at us.

Another highlight happened on a pelagic bird watching trip off Cape Point. Again we had very good weather with flat seas, and on the way home we came across a small anchovy bait ball that was being worked by 3 cape fur seals. We spent some time observing this and on a number of occasions a large bronze whaler shark (copper shark) that was about 2 meters long would come up through the middle of the bait ball gulping large amounts of anchovies. I have not had the opportunity of seeing something like this so close and in such calm conditions and it was an awesome sight. Unfortunately it also happened to be one of the few occasion that Chris did not have his underwater camera with him so he had to silently curse while watching all of this!

In June we will mostly be doing great white shark trips but do have a small number of pelagic shark trips planned. If the weather will allow us offshore these will be the last pelagic shark trips of the season.

I look forward to updating you next month and hopefully I will be able to report that more of our Seal Island regulars have returned to the Island once again.

Best Wishes

Monique Fallows

< Previous > < Next >