The IUCN/SSC Shark Specialist Group
Shark News 11: July 1998
|
A craze for shark-cage diving has its dangers ... for sharks
Ellen Bartlett, Johannesburg, South Africa
The bartender from Miami is standing tall on the port side of the boat,
face to the wind, eyes in a happy squint in the glare of the morning sun.
"There's bungee jumping, there's jumping out of an airplane and
there's this," he is saying excitedly. "This is it. I saw the sign at the
airport and I said 'I gotta do this'." He laughs, a high nervous giggle.
"If you told me five days ago I'd be in South Africa diving for sharks,
I'd 'a told you you're crazy."
Great white shark Carcharodon carcharias investigates a metal cage. Photo © Jeremy Stafford-Deitsch
|
But here he is, in a boat bound for Dyer Island off the Cape coast,
where he will don diving gear and descend into an underwater cage
for a close encounter with Carcharodon carcharias, the great white
shark. He has paid R450 for the experience.
The boat is piloted by Andre Hartman, former Springbok spear
fisherman turned diving entrepreneur. It is a 7m twin-hulled open
fishing boat, painted a tired and peeling red. What little standing room
there is is occupied by a huge wire cylinder with a trap door at the top
- the shark cage. Passengers fit around it as best they can.
The mood is giddy. "Is this a will you're writing?" someone asks.
"This is right up there," says another, in a reverent tone. "Right up there
for stupid, you mean," he is corrected. Could be.
For as long as it has existed - about three years - the Cape's shark-cage
diving industry has been described as a disaster waiting to
happen; tales abound of inexperienced operators taking unsuspecting
clients out in ill-equipped vessels, dropping them into shark-infested
waters like so much bait.
The Department of Sea Fisheries was so swamped by complaints
last year - most from diving operators complaining about their
competitors - it decided to investigate. The department concluded it
was a "user-group conflict", a matter for the diving operators to sort
out, but agreed to mediate. The result has been a much-lauded
code of conduct, to be signed by operators and binding them to
meet minimum standards of safety, competence and etiquette.
It's good news for the human element in shark cage diving. But
what about the sharks?
"The problem, among other things, is that more people want to see
white sharks than there are white sharks," says Len Compagno, a
leading shark taxonomist and head of shark research at the South
African Museum.
How shark-cage diving is affecting the white sharks of Dyer Island is
a matter of debate. Not surprisingly, those in the shark-watch business say
the impact is negligible. But marine biologists who work with the
sharks disagree, and say that such dallying could have far-reaching
consequences for man as well as beast. They point out that in 1991 South
Africa became the first country in the world to declare the white shark
a protected species, but that it has done little
since then to ensure its protection. Reports
have been rife of sharks being brought too
close to the boats, caught in netting and
lines, and cut by the boats' engines.
Marcel Krouse, biologist with the
Department of Sea Fisheries, acknowledges
the problems and the protected status of the
white shark. "You are not allowed to injure,
harm, harass a great white shark. But there is
nothing that stops you from diving around a
shark. You can't prove it's harassment if you
throw a fish over the side."
Others contend that the disturbance is of
a more subtle nature.
Mark Marks is a Californian who came
to South Africa in 1994 to conduct research
into the behavioural ecology of the great
white shark, specifically the sharks that
congregate around Dyer Island. He had to
abandon his research, because he could no
longer regard the Dyer Island as 'natural'
shark habitat. "I was trying to look at the
animals in their natural context," he says.
The advent of shark-cage diving, the presence
of the boats, the bait used to attract the sharks,
made it impossible for him to continue.
"It's not uncommon to see three, four, five boats at a time in the
channel," he says. "You're talking about an area only about 120 m at
its narrowest, and 600 m to 700 m long. It's also a fragile ecological
habitat. That seems to be missed repeatedly. You would be hard-pressed
to get any of the operators to voluntarily admit that their
presence disturbs the animals there. But how can it not?"
For much of the morning, Hartman, his crew of one, and his eight
clients are alone in the channel. Nor do there seem to be any sharks.
Having dropped anchor, Hartman opens a cooler, containing a
lump of meat the size of a soccer ball, marbled pinkish gray. "Mako
shark liver," he says. He cuts off several slabs, ties them up in scraps
of netting and throws them into the water.
Shark bait is known as chum; it varies from dead seals - the
optimum bait, but generally not used for fear of upsetting the tourists
- to ground-up pilchards, tossed overboard to form a long, greasy slick
in the water. "I got a white shark liver once," Hartman says, evading
the question of how he obtained the liver of a protected species.
"White sharks don't like their own liver; they're not cannibals."
When still no shark appears, Hartman throws out a small white
plastic surfboard. The use of a child's beach toy to act as a shark
attractor raises a few eyebrows on board. Hartman shrugs. In any
case, it does not appear to work.
When the first white shark appears, it is from the opposite
direction. The shark ignores the surfboard and heads for the boat.
It pokes its head out of the water, has a look around. Swims away and
then returns, nudging the stern. A youngster, Hartman says, less than 3 m long.
All excitement now, the divers yank on their wetsuits, ready
themselves for the real adventure. One by one, they perch on the
starboard rail, then clamber down into the cage and disappear into the
green water.
The shark plays its role perfectly; it swims around the cage, zooming
in for close-ups, disappearing into the distance, reappearing again.
The view is just as good from above. The shark politely divides its
time between the deep and the shallows, surfacing at the rail, close
enough to touch. There are enough sightings that it is arguable
whether there is one fast-moving shark, or two sharks, or three.
Once everyone has had a turn in the cage, the divers regroup
onboard, satisfied customers. They will go home happy. But the
question that remains is what these encounters mean to the sharks.
Theo Ferreira, a former great white shark hunter turned self-styled
shark conservationist and "white sharkaholic," is one who believes
they mean trouble. "You've got people putting chum into the water,
stimulating the sharks, feeding them. You've got people in cages down
there. So the sharks have been fed, stimulated and conditioned to see
human beings as food-related," he says.
"You're going to have a problem developing where they lose their
instinctive and natural cautiousness and fear around humans. Common
sense tells me you could have a situation where sharks start preying on
humans." Ferreira cites the recent disappearance of a spear fisherman off
the Cape coast, believed to be the result of a white shark attack.
Though Marks believes such talk is speculative, he calls it a
potential can of worms. "Sharks have always pitched up near fishing
boats," he says. "Like any other predator, if it
gets an easy meal, it'll come up and take it."
Hartman's partner John Botha calls the
possibility of cage diving causing attacks
"rubbish". "You must understand something," he
says. "Sharks are a fact of life. It's like driving through
a game reserve. Theoretically, in Kruger National Park,
if there's an elephant around, it can stomp on you. It's the
same thing with sharks. I don't see the shark physically wanting
to take a diver out of the cage. Anything is possible, but that's like
lightning hitting you."
Before the possible becomes probable, Cape Nature Conservation
has stepped in. Dyer Island has been a provincial reserve since 1988,
designated to protect rare birds that nest on the island. The department
is simply extending the Dyer Island reserve to include the waters
around the island, with effect from April 1 1998. From that date,
access to the channel will be by permit only. The department is still
working out details of the permitting process, but promises it will be
strict, and that the numbers of operators will be limited.
"Having seen the mounting problems with white shark diving
operations, with them working within a limited space in the channel,
we were fearful that all this actually could lead to some disaster," says
Duncan Heard, manager of the region responsible for Dyer Island. "It
won't be a free-for-all any more."
The decision has been welcomed by biologists, though Ferreira,
for one, is adopting a wait-and-see attitude. "The commercial guy, he
doesn't care a continental about the law," he says. "They're going to
find a loophole. At the end of the day this is becoming a multi-million
rand industry. These guys aren't going to let the government stop them
from making their money."
Ellen Bartlett is a writer living in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Email: ebartlet@iafrica.com
Her article first appeared in the Johannesburg Mail and Guardian, 6 March 1998.
|
|
|
|
|
