Week in Review 30: 21/07/2013 The White Shark Breaching Season

Gansbaai

We had a great start to the week with an average of 15 sharks per trip for the first 3 days.. then the bad weather came in! We were then stuck on land with strong winds, cold weather and high seas. We had some very unlucky clients that came specifically to do the Shark Cage Diving and Whale Watching and they could not get out on a boat. Fortunately they saw whales however as they stayed with us at the Roundhouse and were on the doorstep to the best land based Whale watching in the world. They saw lots of Whales but unfortunately they did not come too close to the shore due to the high seas. On calm flat days the Southern Right Whales lie within meters of the rocks which is an unbelievable experience.
Before the bad weather came in we had good conditions at sea with visibility from 6-12 meters and fantastic shark activity.

Cape Town

The White Shark Breaching season is in full swing still with up to 23 predations on seals on a single trip and multiple breaches on the decoy each trip. The visibility has been unbelievable at 10+ metres in the last week which has been excellent for the cage diving part of the tour. Shark diving and breaching could not be better the moment. The fortunate thing about False Bay is that the Cape peninsular mountain range shield False Bay on Simons Town side and at Seal Island. When we are hit with cold fronts in the winter with the Northwest winds come from the open sea and hit the other side of the peninsular and it is relatively calm at the Island. This is the cape of storms however and the really large storms still stir up the waters around the Island even if it is shielded.

Sardine Run

The Sardine Run has now officially finished in Port St Johns. The season was a good one with generally slow bait ball action but an abundance of fantastic wildlife seen by all. This year we had a record number of Humpback Whales migrating up the coast and every day there were opportunities to pop into the water and share their space on snorkel. There were thousands of dolphins in the water in search of the sardines and there was always an opportunity daily to slip in the water with them for some special interactions. The number of sharks again this year was unbelievable and into the thousands with mostly Copper sharks and Dusky Sharks but also the odd Bull Shark in the mix. The best bait ball of the season was a huge anchovy ball which one fortunate boat found and everyone managed to get in on scuba. There were over 200 sharks in the water, many dolphins and even tuna shooting up from the deep at the same time as Gannets were dive bombing down from the skies. Gannets can swim as deep as 20 metres and it was amazing to see them hunting underwater at the same time as the other predators. There were quite a few reports of Sailfish joining in on the hunt and some clients were fortunate enough to get some photos. The water was again unseasonably warm which hindered the sardine activity hence not as many bait balls as hoped so we are hoping for things to get back to normal for 2014 and for some nice bait ball action as well as the guaranteed plethora of marine life and predators.

Durban

Shark week is now back in full swing with some awesome dives on cathedral and Raggies cave. We have also been doing some baited dives and have seen on the dives Tiger Sharks as well as many Blacktip sharks.
The Durban Cage Diving has been going well with many Blacktip sharks around the cage and very happy clients. This has become a very popular trip for all as you do not need to have any diving experience to get in the water with the sharks. This week we even hosted the Manchester City operations staff and flight crew, shame the players could not join us but perhaps their insurance companies said no.

Kind Regards,

Dave Caravias
Shark Bookings Team