[imagesource: Chris Fallows]

That cracking photo above was taken by Chris Fallows, who was recently in the news again when his work was featured on Air Jaws: Ultimate Breach, which was shown as part of Discovery’s Shark Week coverage.

Extreme patience is needed to pull off these action shots, and the task isn’t made any easier by the gradual disappearance of great white sharks from the waters off Cape Town.

That’s no secret, and it’s been widely reported that Port and Starboard, two infamous orcas (or killer whales) that frequent these waters, have taken a liking to great white shark liver.

There is still debate around whether or not those two are the sole reason for the disappearance, with others citing climate change and overfishing of their prey species as possible reasons for why there has just been one confirmed sighting of a great white shark in False Bay in the past two years.

Now a government-appointed team of nine experts has released the results of their study, with this from Bloomberg:

The “sharks panel has, amongst other things, noted with concern the disappearance of the white sharks from eco-tourism hotspots,” South Africa’s environment ministry said in a statement. It determined that it was likely “a result of recent orca occurrence and predation, rather than being related to the fishing activity of the demersal shark long-line fishery.”

Respected marine scientists still maintain that overfishing of smaller species has played a role in the sharks’ disappearance, with the dwindling numbers of soupfin and smooth-hound sharks of particular importance.

The panel’s decision not to intervene in demersal shark long-line fishing has come under fire.

In this video, reporter Antony Sguazzin further unpacks the results of the study:

During the presentation of the report’s findings, marine biologist Alison Kock did say there is still much to be learnt:

“Each and every time that this happened [a great white was found dead], there was an immediate drop and gap in white sharks sighting,” Kock said, conceding that “we still don’t have all the answers”.

That’s why they went with ‘likely’, not definitely.

I can’t let you go without watching this one more time:

[source:bloomberg]