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Shark Chumming
| Date: |
16 May 2004 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Nick Chevalier
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
On 5 April this year False Bay in Cape Town was the scene of a brutal shark attack which almost claimed the life of 16-year-old John Paul Andrew. The miracle boy should never have pulled through; the shark had bitten off his leg and, with blood draining out of his traumatised body, his heart had stopped beating for 35 minutes on the beach, and later for another five minutes at the Constantiaberg Medi-Clinic. We visited JP soon after his return home.
Derek Watts (Carte Blanche presenter): 'Hi, I'm Derek... nice to meet you. Are you still in pain, though?'
JP (Shark attack victim) 'Sometimes I just get those phantom pains and stuff. I'm itchy sometimes.'
Derek [speaking to JP's friend]: 'You were there at the time?'
Jay Mitchell (Amateur surfer): 'Yes. I was next to JP.'
Derek: 'What did you see?'
Jay: 'I looked towards JP and, as I looked towards him, the shark breached and smashed him off his board. From what I saw, it didn't look like the shark was going to bite him because I didn't see his mouth gaping. So JP got back on his board and we started paddling to shore. He was a metre behind me and I turned around to see how he was doing when, behind him, I saw the shark breach again and grab him. But it grabbed him in such a way that it made him look like he was levitating on water for a second, and then it smashed him into the water. Then all I remember seeing is red foam and white foam splashing everywhere, and then I saw the tail of the shark flip over - and then I just didn't see JP any more. He was gone. And then I came in and saw Grant Kirkland.'
Grant Kirkland (Amateur surfer): 'I went over a wave... over a wave, and then I saw JP bobbing in the water and immediately I knew there was a big problem, so I started paddling to him straight away. And as I got closer to him, I noticed all the blood in the water and then I knew that the shark had definitely bit[ten] him. I grabbed him straight away. He was conscious, strangely enough. He told me that he had lost his leg and he asked me for help. And I grabbed him, put him on my board. I was actually more freaked out than he was, so I just paddled - half doggy paddled - to the beach as quickly as I could.'
Jay: 'And when I got to him with Grant I heard him say, 'Hey, Jay', in such a normal fashion, like nothing really had hit him yet. And, when we got him to the beach, then he just didn't talk anymore.'
Derek [to JP]: 'And what do you remember before and after?'
JP: ' I don't remember anything... nothing.'
Ins Wyatt (Muizenberg policeman): 'Hi JP! I'm Inspector Wyatt. I'm from the South African Police Services at Muizenberg. I brought your surfboard back and your wetsuit. You're going to have to get a new one!'
JP: 'It's hacked up.'
Derek: 'JP's attack, along with the death of a 19-year-old body-boarder David Bornman off Noordhoek in September, have been the most tragic in a series of incidents involving Great White sharks around the Cape Peninsula. A variety of reasons are being given for this apparent change in shark behaviour and fingers are being pointed at one of tourism's biggest money spinners.'
In 1996 when Carte Blanche investigated the cage diving industry, anything from horsemeat to pig heads were being used to attract Great White sharks to the boats. There was no formal regulation at that stage and only a handful of operators were chasing the action. Eight years later the Southern Cape coast has become one of the world's prime cage diving locations, and 12 licensed operators are now regulated by Marine and Coastal Management.
Derek: 'Rob, is this typical chum here?'
Rob Lawrence (Shark boat tour operator): 'This is very much typical chum. This is usually what I use; it's just sardines. Raw sardine is a very oily, very chunky fish, so what happens is I mush this up. It's frozen and, as it thaws out, it pretty much lets the fish odour come out the bag.'
Derek: 'So is this just going to drift behind the boat?'
Rob: 'This is going to drift behind the boat, and this will be our scent corridor, our chum line, whatever you want to call it. And this is going to give the shark some sort of visual thing on the surface, along with the decoy that we're going to put out.'
Rob: 'What this [a carpet decoy] does... this is just another form of things on the surface for them to be interested in, and the White sharks are generally very interested in things on the surface.'
Derek: 'It's said that they could vaguely represent a surfer or a boogie boarder.'
Rob: 'Well, I don't know if there are too many two foot carpeted boogie boarders, but if there are, then it would represent one. But I don't think that that looks like a boogie board.'
Not easily persuaded are the recreational users of the sea who recently protested on the beaches of Muizenberg, with only hard-core enthusiasts venturing back into the water. Surfing businesses took a knock and people like Berney Shelley of the Western Province Longboard Club started speaking out.
Berney Shelley (Western Province Longboard Club): 'It's quite possible that when you've got chumming and/or baiting in close proximity to humans, the sharks have to - just like any other organism - have to become conditioned if they're repeatedly given food next to another stimulus. That's the whole thing about classical conditioning is it's simultaneous stimulus. You know that story about Pavlov? He noticed his dog salivating every time a particular door was opened and he came to realise that they associated food with that door opening.'
In False Bay, the licensed cage divers are restricted to chumming within a close radius of Seal Island, where the sharks are already attracted to the seals and associated natural waste, but one shark boat tour operator is currently under investigation after chumming too close to the beach.
The cage divers point out that chumming is not exclusive to their operations and that, whether by design or chance, commercial fishing boats are regularly throwing fish waste into the water. Acknowledging this, skipper David Miller is still concerned about an apparent change in the behaviour of the Great White shark.
David Miller (Fishing boat skipper): 'In the old days, my father always used to say that if you see one of these, enjoy it, because you only see it for a split second. If you're lucky, you get a second pass. But now, the shark surfaces 10 metres away, comes straight to the boat as if to say, 'Here I am, feed me', and these people are feeding those sharks.'
In a recent incident that could have come out of a Jaws movie, Mogamat Hendricks jumped out of the way of a leaping Great White that jumped on the boat.
Mogamat Hendricks (Fisherman): 'I was sitting on the boat and I just saw this eye coming up like that. It twisted, and I just saw the mouth open and come down again, and I heard a snap. When it brushed over, it hit me over there, and something hit the boat over here, causing the boat to go like this... And as I flew over there, my head was there, I just saw the skipper's eyes and he was calling out, 'Pull up the anchor! Pull up the anchor!' But I was too scared to get up.'
David: 'Now, if you've got a shark coming to the boat and you don't feed it, it's going to bugger off, but if you feed it, it's going to stay there.'
Derek: 'A local conservationist says that all living beings radiate electricity and, if you provide the magnet that attracts sharks, then you must expect attacks. It's called 'bioelectricity', as Glenn Ashton explains.'
Glenn Ashton (Environmentalist): 'Every living thing has an electrical charge in its body, except I cannot sense yours. Sharks can sense ours. Now what I'm saying, as a theory, is that sharks might be becoming habituated to the presence of bait and fish and fish chum in the water, in the cage diving, because that is the only electrical charge in the water when they are being attracted to the boat.'
For research biologist Ryan Johnson, who has been studying the cage diving and shark feeding interaction, the bioelectrical theory does not hold much water.
Ryan Johnson (Research biologist): 'The electromagnetic sense of sharks is a very short range sense. It's something that will only happen a metre to two metres away. It is used primarily in bottom feeders to recognise and find skates and rays that hide under the sand. It's not used to say, 'Well hey, there's some prey.''
Derek: 'How much of your research relates to cage diving?'
Ryan: 'For the past two years I was running an observer programme where myself and other observers went out on a cage diving boat and asked questions such as, how often these sharks are getting fed, how often they hit the boats, how long do they stay around the boats; looking at their exposure to the boats and trying to get a handle on whether it was enough of an impact to result in any type of conditioning response. Obviously, through the popular press you get the idea that cage diving feeds White sharks, but when you look into it, only 15% of the sharks get a reward when they come to the boat. Eighty-five percent of them leave and get no reward, so they go away frustrated.'
While the debate rages on and with the threat of shark attacks lurking in the background, the surfers are still passionately riding the waves.
For JP, it's all about facing his fears and moving optimistically forward on his road to recovery.
Derek: 'Will you get back into the water again?'
JP: 'I'll get back into the water again, but I'll start off very shallow. I'm still a bit nervous, but I'll definitely get back in the water.'
Derek: 'You'll go back?'
JP: 'Ja.'
Estelle Andrew (JP's mother): 'I'm not at this stage blaming chumming, I'm not blaming sharks, I'm not blaming anything. I'm just happy that my son's okay.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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