Expeditions
Each Expedition is hosted by Chris & Monique Fallows who’s passion, knowledge and love of the wildlife in the area makes this the most personalized and educational trip on offer, with a limited maximum of 8 participants to ensure the best viewing potential.
2011 Expedition
Package Deals
If you are a serious shark lover and if it is a life’s dream to experience the Great White Shark, then the best way to do this is to book a longer stay.
December 2007 / January 2008 SHARK BYTES
Dear Shark Lovers
A very Happy New Year! We wish you all the best for 2008 and hope that you will all get to spend some time enjoying sharks in the upcoming year.
2007 Highlights
Reflecting back on 2007 I can scarcely believe that the year has come and gone so quickly. We have had many highlights with the sharks and it is difficult to choose any particular event that is a stand out. Quite ironically I think that I have to choose a pelagic shark trip that we did on 31 December as the most mind blowing shark experience of 2007.
December Pelagic Sharks
I will of course be talking about this trip is more detail but on the whole I am pleased to report that we have had a fantastic past month of sharks and have been fortunate enough with the weather to get out on about 10 pelagic trips.
Historically during the month of December we have been finding the Agulas current pushing very close to Cape Point bringing with it blue and warm water. Throughout virtually the entire month we have had to travel a good 25 to 28 nautical miles from Cape Point just to find water temperatures exceeding 18 deg C. In fact one our guests asked me on a recent trip if we were heading for the South Pole!
We have also not found the inky blue water with visibility exceeding 20 meters that make this pelagic realm so inviting. At best the water has been a blue/green hue and the best visibility we have had was about 15 meters on one trip.
New experiments
Chris is constantly looking for ways to improve our pelagic trips and this mostly centers around gathering information on the best environmental conditions as well as experimenting with unique ways to attract the sharks. This usually involves hours on the internet looking at, ironically and among other things, what fishermen are doing to attract sharks.
We have implemented a number of different techniques and we feel this could be one the few reasons why we have seen higher numbers of sharks on our trips.
In the past 3 to 4 years we have seen our waiting time for sharks increase from 40 minutes to 2 hours plus which indicates to us that the mako and blue shark population is on a shark decline in South African waters.
On all our December trips we have waited no more that 30 minutes for the first shark to arrive and we have been seeing high numbers of both blue sharks and mako sharks. The number of reasons we can think of for this is that firstly we have been working in areas where the temperature and colour are different, a fairly high amount of a certain size longfin (albacore) tuna has been caught, we have implemented two new attracting techniques and, what we think it the biggest factor, the ominous presence of the shark longlining boats have not been observed.
A very small blue shark
We have also seen a wide size range of blue sharks. We had one particular blue shark of 40 cm (just over 1 foot) (!!!) approach our boat in the presence of 3 blues sharks that were all about 2 meters in length. For the record even though this was the smallest blue shark we have seen and could only have been a few weeks old it already had a pilot fish accompanying it. In fact the blue shark was so small I felt the blue shark was gaining more from the relationship!
We always observe blue sharks being completely comfortable with each other so we were not too surprised that the small blue and the big blues harbored no aggression towards each other. I must admit though that I am a softy when it comes to sharks and I did let the tiny blue eat the bait whenever it was close enough!
Ending 2007 with fireworks
Heading out on 31 December Chris & I were pretty exhausted from doing a number of trips one after the other. I said to Chris that we were going to have to have our party with the sharks that day as there was no way I was going to make midnight!
We also had on board Richard Pierce from the shark trust who was desperately keen to see a mako shark for the first time. He had tried with us before but had lucked out and just seen blues. After a short wait we had one blue shark arrive at the boat that was not too keen on coming close. As the visibility was not great all on board elected to wait awhile before getting in the water for a dive.
Mako Madness
I always feel that our best chance of a mako is the first shark of the day and I was a tad disappointed for Richard as I felt our chances of seeing one were now less likely. Not long after these thoughts our first mako arrived to much excitement of everyone. Within another 5 minutes a second much larger mako of about 2.3 meters appeared. I immediately set about getting all the dive gear organized but before I could finish I heard Chris, Mark who is part of our the crew, Richard and our guests all shouting and screaming like a little kids about a third mako that had just arrived!
This was another good size mako bigger than 2,4 meters. We have only ever had one trip many years ago with 3 makos. Our experience with these sharks is that they do not like being in close proximity of each other and it is for only a very short time that one can see more than 2 makos together. I kept expecting two or at least one mako to leave but to our absolute astonishment they just kept coming!
This is all complete truth but for most of the day we could see up to 5 makos around the boat at any given time and we can only guesstimate that we probably had about 11 different mako sharks during the day.
But, it still gets crazier. During this time the blue shark numbers were also multiplying and they were not in the least bit put off by the large numbers of makos. This really did not make sense to us as well as the fact that the makos sharks were not put off by each other. Again we could only guess but there must have been at least 20 blue sharks present. When standing on the viewing deck of our boat there were just sharks everywhere… around the boat, deep below the surface, they were even backed up in their 10’s in our chum slick.
The brown shark
By this time even Chris came to the conclusion that it was probably not the best idea to jump in the water to join the New Years Shark Party!
Then, amidst the madness a brown shape appeared in the chum slick. For many years fishermen had been telling Chris about large unidentified brown sharks that they had occasionally seen in the tuna grounds. We knew that it was only a matter of time until we came across one so when this slightly shy large brown shark arrived the 5 makos that we could see plus the 15 or so blues sharks were instantly ignored!
The brown shark was a large 3 meters (10 feet) and was covered in fresh bite marks which we presumed were mating scars. We were undecided at the time as to what species of shark it was but looking the photographs we think that it was a large bronze whaler (copper) shark as there was no interdorsal ridge present.
Summing up the day we can only describe it as one of the most exciting shark interactions we have had and I cannot imagine anyone else in the world ever having had a more intense pelagic shark experience of late. The only event that springs to mind is the Oceanic white tip dive with the whale carcasses off Durban many years ago in Blue Water White Death! To me that is very good company!
Treknets
The Strandfontein treknetters have had a poor season and their summer catches that usually consist of kob, yellowtail, elf etc have been poor.
They have also caught very few sharks. There have been virtually no signs of smooth hound sharks. This is very worrying for us as we believe this shark makes up a large part of the summer diet for the Great white shark. The smooth hound shark has been commercially targeted in the last 10 years. Prior to this large numbers of smooth hounds were always caught in the nets (all released).
There have only been a handful of bronze whalers caught, also all released. These catch numbers are also way down indicating the decrease in the population accredited to commercial fishing. Two ragged tooth sharks were caught in the same net and these were also successfully released.
We strongly believe that sharks as predators cannot be removed from the food chain without serious consequences. Nobody knows what the results will be but sadly I believe we will be finding out in the not so distant future.
Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) have the responsibility of managing our marine resources. They are not doing this and they need to be held accountable.
I always like to end on a good note please have a look at Photos of the Month so that you can enjoy some of the experiences we had in December!
We have a number of pelagic trips booked in January. If there are any locals wanting to experience this please email us. The sharks are great at the moment and this is a very unique and exciting trip to experience.
Until next month.Best wishes
Monique Fallow
Checkout
