16th – 21st July 2009

 It was great to be back at sea after the storm had rumbled and blown its way through the Western Cape. We only had one trip today with 10 different white sharks making an appearance. We anchored up on the calm side of the island as there was still a little bit of swell on the Geldsteen. The water is still very cold for this time of year being on average between 13 and 14˚C, it should be 16, 17 even 18˚C in our winter months. We had 3 re-sights today showing that some sharks remain in the area while the storms come through the area. The storm had blown a lot of different jelly fish into the bay, all sorts of variations on colour, shape and size.

17/07/09

A RECORD! Today was a personal best for me with 23 sharks on anchor and another 3 whilst navigating around the island. One shark was swimming around on the surface, another one was around a cage floating near the island and the last one, around 3 metres in length was seen swimming around in Shark Alley waiting for an unsuspecting seal snack to swim by. It is so nice to observe sharks swimming naturally in the channel with no chum or bait in the water, it’s as natural as you can get.

The sharks were just everywhere today, they were coming in from all directions, swimming around, under and over each other, stunning! A lot of the sharks we are observing at the moment have a lot of parasites. These orange/brown sea lice are usually observed around the head region around the nose, eyes, gills and sometimes the fins. The sharks we are seeing also have a lot of white scars around the head which may be indicative of predatory behaviour. When they strike seals they get bitten, scratched and impaled by ribs and other sharp bones from the prey.

We also had many resights today including Big-Girl but unfortunately no Nemo! Some of the other boats have reported sighting of her but we have not seen her since the onset of the storm. Some of the re-sights we had seen just the day before on the other side of the island.

We had 2 trips today with a total of 7 sharks on the morning tour and 9 on the afternoon. We had some other interesting species around the boat today as well including Giant petral’s on both trips and a hagfish in the afternoon. Hagfish are considered to be the most primitive of all fish species, they look like are eels but hagfish and the Lampreys make up a group we call the Agnathans (jawless fish). They indeed do not have jaws but do have rasping pads which they attach to a carcass and then remove tissue. They usually scavenge on whale carcasses in deep waters around the continental slopes.

1 Dec 2008                                                                           18 July 2009

                                                                                                        

19/07/09

Big-girl really has stolen the show this month, every time she shows up around the boat the other sharks all move away a bit sheepish shall we say. She is a beast of a shark, long, fat and feisty exploding from the surface time and time again. Those poor little Cape Fur seals, every time their little bellies rumble they have to go out to the fishing grounds and run the gauntlet past Big-girl and the other sharks.

We had 9 different sharks on the morning trip. We had a few re-sights with one shark in particular that comes to mind, Tin Tin. On our record setting day we had a shark about 2.7 metres in length that worked throughout the trip, it was number 10. We just kept on calling it number 10 all trip and eventually the name Tin Tin came about, whatever works! He is very distinct having a large section of the upper caudal lobe or tail missing. This could be a result of the tail being bitten by another shark or seals, cut by fishing line or even lost to infection if the fin was damaged.

20/07/09

Shark Team anchored up on the other side of the island today as the sea was a little uncomfortable around our favoured location on the Geldsteen reef. Ten different sharks were identified with 2 specimens being larger than 3 metres. We saw another Humpback whale in the distance today and lots of seals porpoising in/out from the island but no predatory behaviour unfortunately. We did see an injured juvenile seal in Shark Alley after the trip. It had 2 bite wounds on the posterior abdomen or back end. This is very typical positioning for bite wounds on Cape fur seals in South Africa. The sharks attack the hind flippers as there are many large blood vessels and they can incapacitate the seal at the same time by removing the flippers. By biting the hind quarters the sharks minimize the chances of being bitten and scratched. Southern Right whales appear to be arriving in the Bay on a daily basis now and the breeding season seems to be in full swing. We were lucky enough to see several Southern Right Whales.