Great White Activity in Fish Hoek
Following the tragic
fatal shark attack of a visitor to
Fish Hoek beach in
Cape Town last month, the
Save our Seas Foundation has been working on a project to map the topography of the ocean floor at the popular family-friendly beach on the False Bay coast with specific focus on the area just off ‘Jagers Walk’ (known to locals as the Cat Walk).
This pathway runs between the sea and the railway line and alongside it are numerous rocks and rock pools. The researches – whose boat I’ve spotted in Fish Hoek several times in the last week or so - want to find out if the fish attracted to this region by the rock pools in turn attract the sharks; and also what kind of protection the rocks afford stealthily approaching sharks which can enter the bay undetected by the
Shark Spotters stationed above the beach on Elsie’s Peak.
While this project won’t necessarily provide all the answers to the problem of swimming in shark-y waters, it may provide a clue or two to the whole picture which Save Our Seas are trying to piece together.
For more information please go to:
Zambezi Sharks Breed River Activity
In a different part of the
Western Cape, a team of researchers from the
South African Shark Conservancy recently headed up the Breede River in the Overberg region to find out more about the Zambezi sharks that have been seen far up this fresh water river.
Around a year back
a giant Zambezi shark (nick-named Nyami Nyami by the researches who discovered it) was seen +- 5.5km up the Breede. This mega predator was 4m long and weighed in at 650kg. Prior to this, scientists thought these sharks did not venture further south than Cape St Frances.
The team’s goal was to find Nyami Nyami and other sharks, tag and release them. They were accompanied by a film crew from a UK documentary company Icon Films and Animal Planet. The sharks could be featured in an Animal Planet special entitled River Monsters.
The researches, who do not use darts, also wanted to gather data such as weight, size and numbers, as well as find out if the sharks are pupping in the river.
Read their
first-hand experiences of tracking and tagging these awesome predators on the
Shark Conservancy Blog.
For more information check out:
