Smile. Say jaws!

If you take into consideration that the sea was rough and bopping us around, that the camera was an underwater disposable point-and-shoot with a manual reload mechanism and film, that the visibility could've been slightly better on the day, that one cannot use the view finder while you are wearing a diving mask and that sharks don't stand still to have pictures of them taken, then I guess these ones came out pretty well. 

While I was in the cage, I tried to capture at least one decent picture, but it was really hard. Apart from all the things mentioned above, the little arm band on my camera was also lost when a friend of mine opened the packet. This meant I had to, among all the issues above, cling onto my camera so it wouldn't drop into the deep blue ocean. While taking shots with my arms extended to at least get a pictures of the sharks and not the cage only I also didn't want to stick my arm out too far where the camera with the hand could be lost due to the interest of a curious shark. I didn't have much hope for the end result, but what I got was much more than what I bargained for. Besides, this was a shark cage diving trip, not a photography trip....

Chumming is the word

Fish chum - works well on sharks

If you look for the meaning of "chumming" on the internet, the word shark pops up every time. No wonder, because chumming is basically the luring of big predator fish by means of throwing chum into the water. Chum is nothing other than fish guts and blood, something sharks apparently like. Sharks have a very keen sense of smell, so if you are on a boat and you throw your remaining Portuguese sardines which you had for breakfast overboard, you might soon have a shark or two on your tail.

There is a huge debate happening at the moment regarding the practice of chumming. Many people believe that chumming turns sharks into man-eaters because they associate human beings with feeding. I don't know if they think about humans when they smell fish or whether they get hungry when they see humans. As long as they keep chumming the sharks at Gansbaai which is situated on the other side of the Peninsula, then I am OK to kite surf on the Atlantic side hoping that the sharks won't make that association when they pass by. In order to create a final opinion on chumming I decided to go along on a shark cage diving boat to see what the hell they are throwing into the water and how the sharks reacts to that kind gesture by the humans. I am not a shark scientist, so I am just reporting on what I saw.

Sea-sick chum - not appreciated by sharks or humans

Getting a boat to go shark cage diving is not a problem in the Cape Town area. There are quite a few operators operating from Gansbaai (translated directly it means Goose Bay), a small fishing town about 40 kilometers on the eastern side of Hermanus. Hermanus of course is famous for its Southern Right Whale Watching tours. Whales don't really do the chum-thing, they just come to the South African coast to check out the human tourists I guess and then give us an opportunity to stare at them and take pictures. You can actually see them from the beach, sometimes even at a closer distance than what commercial whale watching boats are allowed to go. But the topic today is chumming, so let me get back to the Great Whites.

The whole experience form where we paid for the trip, the lunch and short presentation, as well as the actual boat trip to Shark Alley was quite exciting. Once we got to the place we were going to stay anchored, the chum came out. No dead horses or donkey meat as some people believe, just a gory soup of raw fish guts and blood. Definitely not the average sushi lover's hors d'oeuvre, just a smelly mixture of...well...chum. The chum was thrown into the sea, and although it looked pretty much like vomit, there were no "big pieces" to make a shark of 4 meters in length, full. It did work though, because after a couple of minutes the first shark turned up to check out what these fishy tourists were up to again. Maybe hoping for a bigger piece this time, or maybe for a tourist to slip from the deck. Whatever they were thinking, they definitely looked more like curious fish than dangerous predators on a search for a quick meal. The sharks were calm and collected, with no indication that they were going to jump up on the back of the boat and devour each tourist they can get their teeth into. If you know how much dead and unused fish gets thrown overboard from commercial trawlers, I am sure this is by no means competing with the "chumming" of real fishermen.

Human chum - works well on human males

To me it was difficult to see how chumming could make sharks more predisposed to surfers and body boarders. I wasn't at this stage going to jump in the water to test the theory, so I decided to do like the rest and go down in the cage. There was another theory though that I managed to test and that was if urine also attracts sharks. Needless to say after waiting about 3 hours for my turn to enter the cage I could not help it in any case, so I answered Nature's call while I was in the water. Fortunately there were no changes observed in the normal shark behaviour and I guess that theory was also proven wrong. So, if you are a surfer and the question "to pee or not to pee" comes up again in a discussion with your buddies....go ahead. Just make sure you stay in a while longer to let it gradually wash out. It can be very embarrassing when you remove your wetsuit and you smell like the "Gents" at your local pub.  

So chumming to me is just a way of luring sharks closer so that they can be observed by scientists and silly tourists. It is like using a whistle to call ducks. At least the sharks aren't lured closer and then shot by hunters. As a matter of fact, the boat that we were on had a few scientists-to-be on boards, collecting a lot of information on the sharks. The operators are also actively involved in a huge campaign to save the Great Whites. Is it to save their business or to really save the sharks? I am 100% sure it is the latter. These animals are being killed in their thousands because of shark fin soup and misconceptions about their man-eating character. If a surfer or swimmer gets attacked we like to find someone or something to blame, and chumming seems to come up quite often. If we walk through the Kruger National Park and get killed by a lion on who or what can we put the blame then, other than our own stupidity to hang around in their natural habitat? 

  

Believe me, while the waves were quite good around Dyer Island today, I will not go surf there. If they start chumming around the Seli One at Kite Beach, it will end my kite surfing career as well. But as long as the sharks stay in the Gansbaai area while I do my stuff around Kite beach, then they can keep on chumming as far as I am concerned.  I cannot see it changing the feeding behaviour of sharks. But then again as I mentioned earlier, I am not a shark scientist....

Day Trip Around The Peninsula - Part Four

I have not even finished my story about my day trip around the Peninsula and someone has already criticized me for not going down to Cape Point:

"I cannot believe that you embarked on a trip to see the Cape of Good Hope and then turned west 15km before you got there!! The Point is spectacular… you can stand on the knife edge with cliff dropping down to the west into the churning ocean, and steep sided slopes down in the edge of False Bay, with Bellows Rocks being pounded by the ocean out to the south… and Diaz beach, another wonder beach of the Peninsula! You missed out… please make it another trip at some stage. Have a late breakfast at the Two Oceans restaurant looking over False Bay."

Wow, I wish I could use this guy for writing the decriptions to my photos. What I missed out on was described so poetically that I definitely feel the need to go back. That is fortunately the privilege of living in Cape Town, I can go back whenever I want to. I have found out that going places with the bike to see and capture new things is not aways that simple. When you do a longer trip you basically don't have time to see everything, so you just snap what you see and move on. The other option is to go to one place and spend some time there and take in whatever there is to take in...at a slow pace. You obviously get a better experience and better shots when you do the latter. I will do the Cape Point slow visit when I have more time for sure. I will make it a family outing or something and do the "Two Oceans Restaurant" as well, but now I have a few kilometers still to cover so let me not waste any more time...

So, to get back to my Peninsula trip. When I left Kommetjie I went through Noordhoek and straight onto Chapman's Peak Drive. I believe that Noordhoek is also a place where one can spend a whole weekend and discover new things, but I was heading on to Chapman's Peak and thinking that Noordhoek is also a "family" destination. Chapman's Peak has been in the news quite a lot recently. The reason being that it was closed for many years because of falling rocks. Chapman's Peak also hosted the Two Oceans Marathon and the Argus Cycling Tour. The closure of the pass forced organisers to make use of different routes. The pass was re-opened in 2003 and a toll gate was added to obviously raise money in order to keep it "safe". I will write more about the Chapman's Peak road in Part Five.

Just as you start climbing the pass on Noordhoek side, you get a spectacular view of Long Beach and Noordhoek. Here I stopped to take some pictures. I wanted to do one of those panoramic views where you take two or more pictures and "glue" them together. I even packed my tripod to make sure that I have a "steady hand". Stopping there and getting off with all my camera gear put a lot of attention on me. This is obviously a popular spot for tourists too. It's funny how some tourists stare at you when they see you are a local from South Africa,  especially if you are on a bike. I don't know if they just admire you for being South African or being a biker, but it seems as if there are no bikes where they come from. Maybe they get confused between us and the local baboons that is so common around here and just want to make sure they are not feeding the wrong species. So I got off, took out my tripod like I was going to capture the best picture for some international travel magazine only to find out that the little clip that screws onto the camera was still at home screwed onto my camrecorder. So I was screwed too. With the tourists still interested in me rigging up an "outdoor photo studio", I had to hang around pretending that I was first taking handheld shots to warm up my camera and my index finger hoping that they would get into their car and leave. Fortunately they did, so I sheepishly strapped my tripod back to the bike and tried a manual panoramic shot. I didn't have the time to perfect the three pictures, but here they are connected but "unedited".

 Long Beach with Noordhoek on the left.

Long Beach is not only famous because for its natural beauty, it is a popular surfing beach as well. The outside at Long Beach ("Inner Kom") provides the perfect wave for the young, less experienced surfers while "Outer Kom" and Sunset Reef is perfect for the big wave fanatics. Long Beach provides for the entire range of surfers and there is so much space that you can find your own spot on most days, if you like to surf on your own in between some "greyish locals" of course. If you want to suntan you have the beach to yourself. You might want to take a GPS with for directions back to your vehicle. If the wind picks up this beach can turn into a Sahara sand storm. Oh, and do take a wetsuit along, the water temperature ranges from 9 to 12 degrees Celcius in summer.

Talking about "greyish locals". Just around the corner I came across a guy that was sitting under an umbrella with binoculars in his hands. Unlike the perverts at Sandy Bay (I will get to Sandy Bay, Cape Town's only nudist beach in part five), this guy was actually doing something worthwile with his eyes and hands. His name is Sipho and he is a shark watcher. Yes, in South Africa we have a few lookout points manned by very patient people with a sharp eye looking out for the greyish locals, or Great Whites as they are more commonly known as. All this for a very small pay check every week. It is a pity though. I had a chat with Sipho and asked him about his working conditions. It was such a beautiful day and I commented on the "best view anyone could have from his office". What I wasn't thinking about was the sand in your eyes and wind burn on days when the wind is hammering the "Cape of Storms" at 55 km/h. Sipho told me that he enjoys his work and that it was just yesterday that he saw a 3 meter Great White exploring the reefs behind a couple of inattentive surfers. He obviously raises alarm then and raises a flag so that the surfers can "get the hell out". I don't think anyone stays in the water after Sipho starts waving his arms jumping up and down and shouting "Get your arses out of the water...NOW!" I wonder if he realizes that he might've saved a surfer or two from becoming a shark snack before and if he really knows how much his work is appreciated by the surfers? But for Sipho this is all in a days work and if anyone could build him a better shelter to protect him against the elements, I am sure he would be able to protect the surfers even better against the other "elements" out there. "Thank you Sipho and all the other shark watchers. Now can we perhaps swop offices please...!?"

The view from Sipho's "office".

Sipho "nit-combing" the Atlantic for unwelcome intruders

After I left Sipho behind so that he could get on with his work, I was basically on Chapman's Peak Drive and ready to get a "good" shot of the pass. By now the sun was shining and I was very pleased for the fact that with a bike you can stop almost anywhere on the side of the road to take pictures and to enjoy the view. But more on that, Hout Bay and the infamous Sandy Bay in Part Five....

End of Part Four...

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Five

A sharking experience

I have always wondered what the real differences were between adrenaline, adventure and extreme sports. I guess many people will have many views, but I am sure a particular sport can change from the one to the other depending the variation in danger elements or risks involved. Let's take a simple sport like swimming. When you do it in a shallow pool, I guess the words adrenaline and adventure never comes to mind. Do it in the open ocean and adventure sounds appropriate. Do it in shark infested water and extreme all of a sudden seems like the best word to describe it.

Last week on the Internet and e-mails a picture of a shark caught off the South African Coast was doing the rounds. An enormous monster weighing in at 700kg with a lenght of 4,3 meters. Because the pictures were taken in Mossel Bay, most people believe that the shark comes from there. The fact is that sharks have been followed swimming from South Africa to Australia and back. I believe most sharks come back after they have tasted one or two Aussies. Nevertheless, these creature are everywhere in our oceans, and they make the crime risks in South Africa look like a Sunday school picnic.  Btw, this one was caught off the Kwa-Zulu coastline.

I have been surfing for many years and I never viewed surfing as a adrenaline or extreme sport. Maybe just because I never had the opportunity to surf the massive waves in Hawaii, or risking my life above corals in Teahupoo. What I do know now is that I have been surfing in waters where these guys are lurking. Not knowing that fact drops the extremity a little, but show anyone the shark before he enters the water and I am pretty sure not many people will take the risk...making even swimming an extreme sports by my definition.

Shark sightings are common in South African waters, with some of the best pictures of breaching sharks taken in False Bay. I have surfed in areas where sharks are quite common, Durban, Wild Coast, Mossel Bay, Nahoon Reef...but I have only witness a fin about once or twice in my life. And I am not even sure if it was a shark or a maybe a dolphin. Maybe I was just lucky, or maybe I believe the riskier the activity the more enjoyable it becomes...and the luckier you get when you live to tell the story. There is a joke going around about the dude sitting in the a bar claiming that he made a good agreement with the sharks. The sharks will never go into the bar if he will never go into the water. I don't think I am prepared to make that sacrifice just yet. Hope to see you (and not the sharks) in the water soon...