Everywhere you look in Cape Town there’s a tourist spending money, which when you consider the current exchange rate isn’t that hard to believe. Restaurants and bars are packed and business is good, although it turns out you can’t say the same for shark-cage diving operators in Gansbaai.

The problem stems from the lack of sharks, not a single great white spotted in the area for over a week. TimesLive with some potential reasons for this:

Gansbaai marine biologist for the Dyer Island Conservation Trust Alison Towner said the absence of sharks could be attributed to:

• A drop in sea temperature;
• A great white that was hit by a speed boat in Gansbaai in December – research shows it is common;
• Whale carcasses in other areas of the coast that could have attracted them;
• Migrating Orca pods in the area that could have scared them off.

“We have seen a consistently warm period but as soon as the strong southeasterly winds came in the temperatures dropped by 10 degrees,” said Towner.

She said sharks were sensitive to water temperature. They may still be around further off-shore.

I’ll be honest, you tell me there’s a chance of seeing a pod of orcas and I’m there in a flash. The same can’t be said for the estimated 80 000 tourists a year who come to our shores to shark-cage dive, and local businesses are suffering as a result.

According to shark cage diving operator Chris Fallows there may be other factors in play:

“They are most certainly caught as by-catch off our coastline. There is a legal shark long-line fishery where six boats go out and kill over a thousand sharks per boat per trip,” says Fallows.

He said there was also illegal shark fishing along the coastline.

If you think this is good news for your favourite beach spot consider this – at least when they were all in Gansbaai people knew where they were. Happy swimming.

[source:timeslive]