Nicole: The True Story of a Great White Shark’s Journey into History – Richard Peirce
Nicole’s story is not new, and can be summarised briefly. She was a great white shark, tagged in Gansbaai near Dyer Island in November 2003. In February 2004, Nicole’s tag popped off as scheduled, 11,000 kilometres from where she was tagged, in a location off Western Australia. In August 2004 Nicole was again identified in Gansbaai, having made the return journey.
It was the first, furthest and fastest recorded transoceanic migration by a white shark. Its most important consequence was that it provided scientific grounds to advocate for extended protections for white sharks, outside of South Africa’s territorial waters.
Nicole
The book Nicole chronicles Nicole’s journey, and the work of the researchers who studied her, many of whom have gone on to illustrious careers (but be warned, the names of several of the scientists are subject to creative misspellings). The book beautifully put together, with a lot of photographs. This and the simple, vivid writing style make it an ideal gift for shark-obsessed youngsters. In imaginative interludes the author describes what Nicole might have experienced as she swam to Australia and back.
The scientific paper describing Nicole’s migration can be found here (paywalled) and here (pdf), and there’s some excellent information about Nicole on Michael Scholl’s White Shark Trust website. He was the researcher – now CEO of Save Our Seas – who identified Nicole’s distinctive dorsal fin on her return to Gansbaai. Read a review of Nicole and an interview with the author here.
I’m back from an overly lengthy blogging hiatus (sorry) to resume a function that I’ve performed once or twice in the past. Fortunately I have had octopus on my mind and had already started posting again, and so we aren’t doing a standing start.
Humpback whale on the beach
I have read some legislation so you don’t have to, will try to tell you what it means, and – if necessary and possible – I will tell you how to object to it. Someone has to do it, and my mathematician’s brain actually quite likes trying to follow the logic of these documents. (Previous efforts along these lines include this one on seals, this one on new MPAs, and this one on the Tsitsikamma MPA.)
The new legislation this time is actually two documents that were published in the Government Gazette on 30 May. Before we get into these two most recent documents, however, it may be instructive to look back at the original act that they refer to.
National Environmental Management Act: Biodiversity
The act in question is the National Environmental Management Act: Biodiversity, number 10 of 2004 (pdf full text). We will call it NEMBA for short. This act is a framework which provides for the management and conservation of South Africa’s biodiversity, as well as the protection of species that require or deserve it, the fair apportionment of benefits that may arise from the country’s biological resources, and the establishment of SANBI.
The important sections of this act for us, right now, are sections 56 and 57. Section 56 empowers the Minister of Environmental Affairs to publish in the Government Gazette, from time to time (at least every five years or more often than that), a list of critically endangered, endangered, vulnerable, and protected species. A species may be protected but not endangered; a case in point is the Cape fur seal.
Section 56 of NEMBA
I am not knowledgeable enough to state confidently that the extract above is using a set of widely accepted definitions here. However, this list of definitions from (critically) endangered to vulnerable does look a lot like the IUCN categories for classifying species at risk of extinction.
The next section talks about activities involving species that fall into one of the categories defined in section 56. Provision is made here for the Minister to define activities that are “restricted”, and section 57 specifies that if an activity is restricted, a permit is required in order to perform it. The definition of restricted may vary from species to species (but I am getting ahead of myself).
Section 57 of NEMBA
Finally, section 97 of NEMBA, which is on page 40 of the PDF file I linked to above, empowers the Minister to make regulations dealing with a large number of matters, mostly permits, and threat-minimisation for threatened ecosystems.
Marine Threatened or Protected Species regulations
With that preamble, let us turn to the most recent regulations, which were made in terms of section 97 of NEMBA and pertain to threatened or protected marine species. They come in two parts. The first (pdf – all page numbers below refer to this file) is a set of regulations, mostly related to permits. This sounds very boring, but there are some interesting bits, and an important definition. Definition first:
Definition of harassment
This is a very important definition (from page 10-11) as it essentially determines what is legal and what is not in terms of the act, and one that I think is perfectly reasonable. You can still take photos of and dive with seals, turtles and most sharks. Whale sharks and basking sharks are not to be bothered up close, though.
Notice also that we now have a definition for harassment of dolphins; it has been my understanding (perhaps incorrect) that until now there has been a loophole in that there has been no legal prohibition on approaching dolphins in a boat, whereas boats must stay at a distance of 300 metres away from whales. I can think of other things I have seen boats doing with dolphins – such as corralling them by speeding in a circle at full throttle – that also seem like harassment to me, but don’t quite fit this definition. But I think this is a start. Also, no swimming with dolphins – for profit or not.
Swimming with dolphins
The regulations go on to state that their purpose relates to the permit system provided for in NEMBA, to registration and legislation of facilities like wildlife breeders and rehabilitators, and to the regulation of activities defined as “restricted”. The regulations also provide some further stipulations regarding boat-based whale and dolphin watching, and white shark cage diving. It is specifically stated that the regulations are to be applied in conjunction with CITES, international regulations which circumscribe international trade in wildlife (and in this way achieve protection for some species).
Page 17-18 defines restricted activities (in other words, activities which you either cannot do at all, or for which you need a permit).
Restricted activities
Page 18 further clarifies that a permit is required in order to carry out a restricted activity, and the regulations go on to define various types of permit in terms of their period of validity and other criteria.
Permits required for restricted activities
There is a lot more on permits, the risk assessments required before they can be issued, and criteria to consider in permit applications. (Does the applicant have a record of offences under NEMBA? Are there objections to issue of the permit? And so on.)
Page 38 mentions that in the case of a captive breeding or exhibition facility, no whales, dolphins, seals, sea birds, white sharks, basking sharks or whale sharks may be introduced from the wild. If I read this correctly, this puts paid to the restocking of dolphinariums with wild-caught animals. Also a start. If you are interested in this aspect of the regulations, I would encourage you to go through the document yourself.
There are some more good provisos aimed at the regulation of wildlife sanctuaries, but that isn’t my main area of interest here.
You may have picked up that some of the activities defined as restricted may be required actions in the event of a whale stranding, for example, or the entanglement of a seabird or turtle in fishing lines. What to do?
One must still act within the law when a stranding occurs
The regulations make specific provision for the cases in which one might need to handle, move, or even kill an animal listed as threatened or protected. Only those individuals or organisations which are in possession of a permit may perform any of these restricted activists; this largely precludes members of the public from assisting in any significant way at whale stranding, for example. I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.
Exceptional circumstances
Finally the regulations turn to white shark cage diving, and boat-based whale and dolphin watching. I am not sufficiently familiar with the existing regulations of these two industries to comment on what is different or new here, but it is interesting to read through the provisions for each. They seem well regulated. Free diving with white sharks is specifically forbidden. Additionally, as item (e) below states, even if an operator is in possession of a cage diving permit, this does not permit them to chum (“provision” or “attract” sharks) anywhere else.
Cage diving conditions
List of Threatened or Protected Marine Species
The second part of the Government Gazette publication on 30 May is a list of threatened and protected animals. This list mentions fish, whales, seabirds, turtles, and even hard corals. This document (pdf – page numbers below refer to this file) has a very particular tabular layout.
How the list of species works
Column 2 defines the restricted activities that are prohibited in terms of section 57 of NEMBA (see above). Column 3 provides the exceptions to that rule. [This column of the table mentions section 57(4) of NEMBA – you’ll see my extract above only goes up to (3). I suspect there’s an amendment to the act that I haven’t found that includes this item.]
There is very little variation in the list of restricted activities (column 2) across all the animals and birds; whales have the most interesting list of exempt activities (column 3), which is why we will look at them as an example. This table is from pages 138-139. Click to enlarge.
Whales (page 138-139)
Column 2 of the table above defines all the things you can’t do to whales – the “restricted activities”. Column 3 lists a whole lot of terrible-sounding things that can be performed under certain exceptional conditions, in the event of a whale stranding itself on the beach, for example.
This is a good time to practise using the definitions. Notice that column 3 allows “harassing [of the stranded whale] by any Departmental official.” This does not mean that someone from Environmental Affairs is allowed to go and prod a stranded whale with a stick, or throw sand at it. We are talking about harassment in terms of the legal definition above, and this may include “disturbing” the whale, or approaching closer than 300 metres on a boat, for example.
If you’re interested to go and look, the pages of the species list pertaining to seals and their relatives is on pages 141-144. There are no special provisions to worry responsible water users, and the definition of seal harassment as shown above (approaching a colony closer than 15 metres in a boat or 5 metres as a human) is I think entirely reasonable.
Finally, here’s an extract from the permit application form. I include this to show you that all the restricted activities for which permits are required are pretty extreme, and not things that your average recreational diver would reasonably want to do.
Restricted activities permit application form extract
This has been long, but I hope helpful. The regulations aren’t open to comment (I think I may have missed that earlier this year or last year… oops), they are final.
Energy and advocacy is best directed towards things that the diving community can have an impact on as a collective voice, and in ways that will have a chance of success. In other words, perform actions out in the real world, and align yourself with organisations that do real, scientifically informed conservation work.
I’m sure you all can think of other ideas, but I do have one suggestion regarding a species that isn’t listed here. The sevengill cowsharks that we see at Millers Point aren’t protected (they are “data deficient” on IUCN Red List). If you feel strongly about them, can I suggest as an easy first step, writing some letters (the letter in that link is out of date due to ministerial shufflings, and shark finning in South African waters is banned but this is poorly enforced – but you get the idea).
Once again here’s a link to the regulations, and here’s a link to the species list. Both are pdf files, hosted on this site in case the Government Gazette links above break one day.
Michael Muller is probably best known for his work as a portrait photographer (focusing on celebrity subjects). He also has, it turns out, a longstanding fascination with sharks. While working as a commercial photographer for Speedo, Muller designed and built a waterproof housing for his 1,200 watt studio strobe lights. Incredibly, he takes these lights underwater – assisted by two to six divers and at least one person on the boat – and has spent a couple of years travelling the world to photograph sharks.
The resulting photos, of bull, tiger, white, hammerhead and several other species of shark, are fascinating. They are unlike any shark photographs I have seen before, with a cinematic quality and the intensely unusual property – for most underwater photos – of being filled with light. Sharks swim out of bright white light towards the camera, and many of the images are deliberately over-exposed, heightening the dramatic effect. The jump from having professional-quality camera strobes to essentially a full studio lighting rig underwater is enormous, and the results are visually stunning.
Muller’s pictures, to me, emphasise the otherness of sharks. They do not look like cuddly, approachable (although in many cases Muller went very, very close to his subjects) or easy to fathom animals. I like this. Some approaches to conservation try to emphasise how sharks do not intend harm, and attempt to demystify them, with the aim of making them comprehensible and thus worthy of protection. The genre of photography that shows divers and sharks apparently harmoniously inhabiting the watery realm is invariably more about the humans than it is about sharks. That criticism cannot be levelled at these images.
The final sections of the book contain a species guide, essays about shark ecology and conservation, and technical information about the photographic equipment and shot set up. Some of the shark biology and conservation information was contributed by Capetonian shark conservation biologist Alison Kock, who put False Bay’s white sharks on the scientific map.
You can preview some of the images from the book here, and an interview with Muller here. The Washington Post and Wired have image-rich features on this project, too.
This is an enormous book (standard Taschen fare). You’re going to need a bigger bookshelf (a joke about this book which has no doubt been made forty times – I apologise). You can get a copy here (South Africa), here or here.
Jean-Marie Ghislain is a Belgian photographer who has had the privilege to visit far flung places on earth, and to dive with charismatic megafauna of all descriptions. This book is a beautiful collection of images of all kinds of sharks, taken from South Africa to Guadaloupe. The images were taken using natural light only. The level of detail in some of the photographs is almost comparable to the pictures in Beautiful Whale.
There are several images of our local broadnose sevengill cowsharks, and I have enjoyed being able to show them to friends who aren’t familiar with these sharks (my own photos are pretty poor)!
The photos are entirely black and white, which lends a solemnity and luminosity to the sharks’ bodies that is very beautiful. There is almost no text, and one doesn’t miss it. At the back of the book, a mosaic of the photos presents information on the type of shark, the camera settings and a few sentences on the taking of or the motivation for the picture.
The photographs reveal that author is of the school of thought that advocates touching sharks, and some of the photographs even depict illegal dives outside the cage with great white sharks at Isla Guadalupe. This is a great pity and should not be mistaken for an activity that has any conservation benefits for sharks whatsoever.
You can see a couple of the photos from the book, and some information about the author, in this article from the Telegraph.
Get a copy of the book here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here or here.
I have an obsession with False Bay; our lives revolve around its moods, and we spend a lot of time around, under or on the waters of the bay. Tony’s business activities are affected by conditions in False Bay, but we also pay attention to the bay because it’s interesting to us. Life lived according to the rhythms of this beautiful body of water to me feels far more authentic and significant than a life lived according to the rhythms of my alarm clock and office hours.
I’ve been reading some things about the history of False Bay, and this book seemed to be the place to start. It was published in 1985 and is written a bit like a Lawrence G. Green book, but with (I think) slightly more attention to detail and accurate sourcing. There is a list of references at the back, but a lot of it is oral history that Tredgold gleaned from interviewing (then) elderly inhabitants of the settlements on the bay’s edge.
It’s essentially a colonial history of False Bay, with a view that history only started when the Dutch arrived in the Cape. There’s a brief section on the very early geological history of the bay, but not enough for my liking, and I would have liked to know more about the Strandlopers who frequented the area before the Dutch and British started stampeding around and shooting cannonballs at each other.
Tredgold devotes most of his attention to the history of Simon’s Town, Fish Hoek, Kalk Bay, St James, Gordon’s Bay and the Strand. False Bay was a very significant fishing resource right from the time of early Dutch settlement at the Cape, and up until about 1900 a significant amount of whaling was done in the bay, most of it from Kalk Bay. By about 1900 it wasn’t economically viable (too few whales) to run a whaling business inside False Bay any more. I found this remarkably sad – that already over 100 years ago humans had practically exhausted some of the marine resources available to them – but also heartening, given the generous numbers of whales that visit False Bay between June and November in the present day.
Despite the importance of the False Bay fishing opportunities, the focus in this book is on human history. The natural history of the bay is only mentioned insofar as it illuminates the activities of the humans in the settlements on its fringes. There are only two or three mentions of the False Bay white shark population: one is made as part of an account of Simon van der Stel’s visit to Seal Island in 1679. The men caught fish around the island, but sharks took many of them before they could be landed. Little did he know what a massive economic powerhouse the False Bay cage diving industry would be over 300 years later!
There are some interesting stories of some of the many wrecks in False Bay, but for more detail on the human aspect of those I’d suggest the Michael Walker booksHard Aground, Forgotten Shipwrecks of the Western Cape and Shipwrecks of the Far South.
This isn’t an easy book to get hold of – it’s out of print – but you can probably find a copy on Bid or Buy, which is where I found mine.
Reading this so close to Thomas Peschak’s book Sharks and People made for an interesting juxtaposition of two books that are both concerned with similar subjects. Peschak makes his interest in the relationship between humans and sharks explicit in the title of his book, and goes on to explore it in a primarily visual manner.
Juliet Eilperin is an environmental reporter for the Washington Post, and despite the singular focus of its title, her concern in Demon Fish seems to be similar to Peschak’s: sharks and people. I’m not sure if this is because, as an outsider to the world of shark research, shark diving, and shark conservation she had couldn’t but focus on the human element of sharks’ existence, or whether it was a deliberate tactic.
Whatever the reason for the book’s focus, this is actually a very good introductory volume to give to someone who doesn’t know much about sharks, and who may not understand the conservation concerns surrounding them. This is not a scientific volume, and may disappoint shark fanatics who purchase it expecting to be enlightened on shark biology. Eilperin provides some facts about a few of the better known (read: more charismatic) species of shark, but the bulk of the book comprises interviews with shark scientists (such as Neil Hammerschlag, Alison Kock, Sarah Fowler, and Barbara Block), fishermen, activists (including seriously legitimate ones like Sonja Fordham), and Asian players in the shark fin trade.
Eilperin dives with sharks in the Bahamas, eats shark fin soup, and travels the world putting together a picture of sharks’ role in local economies – the lucrative fin trade, whale shark tourism in Belize, cage diving in Gansbaai, South Africa – and in human culture. After visiting a shark caller in Papua New Guinea, she traces the history of the 1916 shark attacks along the North Atlantic coast of the USA that did so much to shape our modern perception of sharks, and interviews Jaws author Peter Benchley’s wife (he is deceased). An analysis of efforts to mitigate human shark interactions, lead her to Cape Town’s Shark Spotters program, the Shark Shield device (formerly Shark POD) and the indiscriminate shark mitigation program of the KZN Sharks Board. The acknowledgements at the end of the book read like a who’s who of shark researchers and conservationists (including the venerable Eugenie Clark). Ms Eilperin’s research was thorough!
The book seems to have been reprinted as Sharks: Travels Through a Hidden World in the United Kingdom. I prefer this title, as Demon Fish seems a little bit exploitative and sensational, particularly given the fairly benign nature of the book’s contents. There is a detailed and fascinating review of Demon Fish at the London Review of Books, an interview with Eilperin here, and a very short interview with her here.
Buy the book here if you’re in South Africa, and here if you’re not. If you want to read it on your Kindle, go here.
Ok so this is a bit late, and if you haven’t done your Christmas, Hannukah and Festivus shopping yet, shame on you. Or just shame. Most of these ideas don’t entail going to a mall and having your personal space invaded by ten thousand hormonal adolescents. You can order online, or make a phone call or two. Get going!
Christmas at Sandy Cove
Books
For the reader, you could check out our book reviews, arranged by topic:
I’m not going to suggest a magazine subscription – I’ve let most of ours lapse as we seem to have entered a long dark teatime of the soul when it comes to South African diving magazines. If the quality picks up, they’ll be back on the gift list at the end of 2014.
Make sure you know the returns/exchanges policy of wherever you make your purchases. Some places can be difficult, and if the mask doesn’t fit it’s no good at all!
For lady divers
For the diving lady in your life (or your man friend with too much hair), what about some rich hair conditioner to apply before going in the water? Suggestions here. A pack of cheap, soft fabric elasticated hairbands is a good stocking filler.
Some high SPF, waterproof sunscreen, or a nice hooded towel for grown ups (available in one or two of the surf shops in Muizenberg) would also not go amiss.
Experiences
Don’t forget to add a memory card for the lucky recipient’s camera if you plan to gift any of these! Contact Tony for prices.
My underwater alphabet is available for R200 in A1 size, fully laminated. Shout if you want a copy.
If you take your own photos, you could print and frame a couple, or experiment with stretched canvas prints if that’s your thing. A digital photo frame pre-loaded with underwater images is also a lovely gift for a diving friend.
Donations
For the person who has everything, or because you’re feeling grateful:
I love maps (our home is full of them) and have more than a passing interest in sharks. I’ve fooled around with the meeting point of those two subjects during the course of a class I took called Maps and the Geospatial Revolution – you can see the results here. I was therefore delighted and intrigued when Mike (whose blog you should subscribe to – do it now!) posted a link to an ArcGIS map of shark incidents, worldwide.
His take on it was that it shows there is no correlation between shark bites on humans, and locations where sharks are fed or lured with food as part of eco-tourism, suggesting that (as the science also suggests) sharks are not turned into “man eaters” by nearby baited dive or cage diving operations.
Shark incidents worldwide
Check out the map here. Click on the Legend text in the left hand sidebar to see what the different coloured dots mean. As it stands the map is not terribly helpful for analysis because it’s hard to discern the different colours of the dots – the types of incidents range in severity. The dots are also clustered most around the most areas that are most heavily populated with sharks and water-using humans. This mostly tells you about population levels, and not so much about sharks. It’s impossible to see any kind of trend because the data is from 1982 to 2012. Conclusions (or hypotheses) such as Mike’s, that are time-independent, are quite appropriate, however.
There’s more information on the source data for the ocean map here (not for the shark incident data – I’d surmise that it came from here or here).
The weekend forecast is for rain on Saturday and partly cloudy weather on Sunday. I am sensitive to water and would prefer not to dive in the rain so our plan is to launch on Sunday, heading to Outer Photographer’s Reef and Phoenix Shoal, launching from False Bay Yacht Club 10 am and 12 am.
Summer is coming but we are not quite there yet so a jacket was still required on the boat today. Despite the south easter that has blown the past week, False Bay is surprisingly clean. I took a trip out today and the further out in the Bay I went the cleaner it got. Estimates at Seal Island from the cage divers was 12 metre visibility.
View of Fish Hoek from Contour Road
Upcoming events
November 7th is Diversnight International, sign up here. It is an international event with the aim of having as many divers in the water as possible at 8.13pm. We will confirm the dive site once I’ve checked tides and got permission if necessary. There will be cake.
Our long planned Red Sea trip is going ahead next week; we leave on Thursday next week. There will most likely not be a newsletter for a week or two. While we’re away (or technically on our way back), the ScubaPro Day takes place at False Bay Yacht Club. Discounted boat dives and the chance to try some dive gear (tips on that here) – the participating dive charters will take bookings directly.
