Making Waves: S.O.S

So on Saturday I, along with a couple of other volunteers from the Two Oceans Aquarium, went to the Save Our Seas Shark Centre in Kalk Bay, Cape Town.

Here Paul, the dude, spoke to us about the different research and educational activities that they do, which focuses mostly on the education of others on sharks and their activities around the coast of South Africa.

The SOS Shark Centre here in Cape Town, along with tourism for the city of Cape Town, are the team responsible for providing our beaches with the shark spotters.

This Kalk Bay branch of SOS in particular focuses mostly on going around to schools to speak to kids in the hopes of breaking misconceptions they might have of sharks and teach them about other marine activities around South Africa, but specifically Cape Town.

An interesting point Paul made was that even though the film is nearly 40 years old, almost everyone has heard of the film 'Jaws':

Even little 5 year old kids are among a large portion of the global population that fear sharks for the impression the film gave of them as being these mindless, blood-thirsty monsters.

"Shark bites are rare typically random events"

Unfortunately they now have this image of being enraged machines that attack humans constantly, swallowing them whole until they have eaten anyone and everyone they can get.

Those of us who are more eh-jucated know that sharks don't naturally eat people. Duhs.

"Sharks don’t see people as their natural prey, but they may occasionally bite to investigate what you are, they may also bite because they feel threatened or in some cases they may even mistake people as their prey."

Here in Cape Town, the Great White's strategy of feeding is to breach. This means they attack their prey from below, surprising them and sometimes jumping out of the water completely to grab their prey, which is most typically a Cape Fur Seal.

Cape Fur Seal

Having an abundance of seals here on Seal Island in False Bay, the sharks have, as Paul likes to put it, a 5-star restaurant of seals.

Paul likes to engage with the kids and asks them for their opinions on sharks. Their answers to his questions usually go something like this:
The children's guess as to how many humans were killed by sharks last year worldwide:
5000
10 000
20 million

The real answer as to how many humans were killed by sharks worldwide in 2010:
5

The children's guess as to how many sharks were killed by humans last year worldwide:
5
25
100

The real answer as to how many sharks were killed by humans worldwide in 2010:
Between 70 million - 100 million

So... you decide who are the real monsters.

"Since 1960, only 25 attacks have occurred on the Cape Peninsula. That is less then one attack per year. Of these 25 attacks on the peninsula, a high percentage have been on spear fishers (Snorkelers who, as they spear the fish and cause it to bleed, unfortunately attract sharks):

In 51 years, only 4 of these last 25 attacks have proved to be fatal."

From 2004-2011 the shark spotters have spotted 885 sharks, and out of these 885 sharks that have come to our waters, only 4 attacks have occurred.
These sort of statistics just goes to show the effectiveness of this programme, and also shows that the perceptions we have of sharks are way out of proportion.

You should be aware that:

"Great Whites are fully protected in South Africa and cannot be hunted, killed, fished or harmed and doing so could see you imprisoned for two years, fined R50 000 or both. They are listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, which means they face a high risk of extinction. Attracting sharks without a permit is illegal and prohibited"

Even though many of us have a limited mental image of what a shark looks like, just remember there are at least 100 different kind of sharks here in South Africa, not just the Great White, awesome as it may be.