[imagesource: Dimi / CC BY 2.0]

Recently, after what was a rather lengthy stay of absence, great white sharks have once again been spotted in the waters around Cape Town.

The reasons for their absence have been well documented, and local businesses like shark cage diving operators have really taken a hit.

Despite the lack of sightings at popular swimming beaches around Cape Town, the Shark Spotters team have remained hard at work.

In a recent profile on the Telegraph, the decline in great white shark sightings is laid bare:

Between 2010 and 2016, Shark Spotters logged an average of 205 great white shark sightings per year, in and around False Bay. In 2018 that number fell to 50 – and in 2019 not a single sighting was recorded…

For the 20 months leading up to January 7 2020, not a single great white had been seen. But then, a 13-foot shark was spotted by a cage diving operation off Seal Island in False Bay, then another (perhaps the same shark) on January 12 close to Macassar – 20 miles east of Muizenberg.

What this means is that the organisation’s spotters are now on high alert, and that includes Dennis Chikodze, who gazed out at Muizenberg Beach from a lookout point on Boyes Drive.

Shark Spotters’ field manager Monwa Sikweyiya was with him when the Telegraph visited:

“Of course, your eyesight has got to be spot-on and you have to have amazing levels of concentration,” said Monwa. “We get used to looking out to sea and looking at nothing. Then, all of a sudden, there will be something. It could be a seal, it could be a whale, it could be a shark – but they all swim in a different pattern.”

Image: Simon Parker

If one of Monwa’s team believes they’ve spotted a shark, then a hasty call is made to a colleague on the beach below. Sometimes a drone is dispatched to take a closer look, but these modern, high-tech solutions are only ever weather dependent and Muizenberg is often buffeted by a formidable wind. The human eye – and the judgment and intuitions of the men and women behind them – could be the difference between life and death.

“These guys spend hundreds and hundreds of hours looking down at the ocean – they are the only ones capable of being in charge of the situation,” said Monwa. “It’s mostly about making big decisions. Sometimes we see an animal on a mission and those are the times we have to be very careful.”

At present, the organisation, which started back in 2004 after a spate of shark attacks that rocked the Cape Town community, employs 40 people, and does far more than simply scan the water.

Sarah Waries, the CEO, stresses that they are also “ocean ambassadors” who “spread the message of shark and marine conservation to both local and international visitors”.

Given that sharks have always had a bad rap (thanks, Jaws), that’s a vital part of their mission.

They’re noble beasts, essentially at the top of their food chain (killer whales aside), that should be appreciated rather than feared.

You can read the full Telegraph story here.

[source:telegraph]