Yesterday bodyboarder David Lilienfeld suffered fatal injuries after being attacked by a shark near Cape Town. On the same day, several international websites also happened to run a feature on Andre Hartman, South Africa’s “Shark Whisperer”.

Pictures of Hartman placing his hand on the snout of a great white shark and “putting it in a trance” were the main focus. They can be seen below, and were taken near Dyer Island by Doug Perrine, an American photographer. Perrine explains what happened:

I was there to obtain pictures of a shark raising its heads out of the water and opening its mouth – as Andre was able to produce. The shark was attracted by the scent of the bait that is put out. Andre reached down and tickled the underside of the shark’s snout, while gently lifting up. This part of the shark’s body is loaded with nerve endings, and the creature’s sensory system became overloaded from the stimulus. The shark seemed to enter a pleasant, but confused state where it was dreamily seeking the source of the stimulus. So there was no trigger for the shark to attack anything.

In the past, Hartman has also appeared in a Discovery Channel documentary “Great White Sharks: Uncaged” where he swam unprotected with a group of the sharks.

It seems the debate regarding sharks – whether we should let them be or whether we should try and co-exist with them – continues.