Shark Month! (and a bit of conservation preaching)

I’m never going to view Shark Week on the Discovery Channel the same way again.  I just spent every day of the past month admiring, learning about and working with Great White sharks.   I’ve seen each unique scar, I’ve seen them roll their eyes as they go for bait, I’ve seen them extrude their jaw bearing their 7-rows of teeth, I’ve seen ¼, ½ and full-bodied breaches, I’ve touched them as they glide past the cage, I’ve been face-to-mouth as they gnaw on the cage right in front of me and I’ve even suffered a minor back injury after a WWF-style smackdown from a flying Great White.  It’s pretty much been one of the best months of my life.  

I’ve always had a fascination with sharks being that I grew up on the Pacific.  Great Whites in particular.  I fear them yet simultaneously love them and now want to be around them all the time.  I guess that all boils down to massive respect for these awesome beasts of the deep.  I’m going to go through serious shark withdrawal when I leave the program.  They’ve oddly become like pets to me and I have definitely picked favorites:

• Stinger is a 1.9m female who will always have a special place in my heart.  She’s only a lil’ girl, but she has massive personality.  She’s quite feisty and is almost puppy-like in her demeanor.  I’ll never forget the first time we met her when she went up and mouthed a jellyfish not knowing that they sting.  I saw the pink blob disappear into her mouth and then watched as she flinched and spit it out right away.  So cute. I wanted to name her Jelly but I guess that was too wimpy, so Stinger it is.  She’s my girl!
• Flash is a 2.7m female who always puts on a great show.  She makes for awesome photos.  She’s all about the sneak attack from below and loves to make vertical ascents to the surface before explosively breaching out of the water for the bait.   There is no way to see her coming and she’s successfully snagged 22 total baits in January alone.  In comparison, the second-place bait-snagger has only gotten 5.  Note: we do not feed the sharks and only use the bait as a lure.  Think of it like a matador’s cape to a bull.  But there’s only so much reaction time you can have when a shark like Flash is around.
• Little Sharkira is a 2.6m female who is absolutely gorgeous.  She is littered with all kinds of black, white and pink scars that make her look super cool.  Michael, the videographer on the boat, totally has a crush on her.
• Tina is a 3.3m female who just showed up towards the end.  She’s a big mamma with a lot of girth but is very agile.  Her trademark is to make a pass at the bait like she’s not interested and then make a U-turn and go for it full-on.  Such a tease.  I suggested we name her Tina Turner and it stuck.  She’s a super nice, calm shark and is one of those ones that you could do nose-ups and free-dive with.  I mean, not me, but someone else, obv…

I’ve gotten a peek into the world of people who have devoted their lives to sharks, each with a different story as to how they got into this line of work.  Some even started out as poachers who have since done a 180 after realizing how amazing and crucially important these animals are to the health of our oceans. 

Unfortunately, poaching and finning still happens to a large degree today.  Shark populations are being decimated, which leads to a terrible chain-reaction in the oceans.  Sharks keep the populations of seals and other lower-level predators in check.  Without sharks, seal populations would explode which would in turn wipe out fish populations.  So I hope you don’t like seafood because there goes the fishing industry.  And then there’s finning.  The process of finning is sick: once a shark is captured, its fins are sliced off (all the while you can see them rolling their eyes back each time indicating that they do in fact feel the pain) before their limbless bodies are dumped back overboard to drown and sink to the bottom of the ocean.  And what’s most absurd about it is that the fins are mainly used in Asia as an aphrodisiac.   People really suck sometimes.

On a lighter note, at least there is some work being done to protect sharks around the world.  South Africa was the first country to enact conservation laws with the USA and Australia not far behind.  

So now that I’ve convinced everybody to love sharks and stop killing them :), I will leave you with a few interesting bits of information on Great Whites:

• They are warm-blooded.  Their core temp hovers around 25C.
• They have the ability to detect electrical fields, pressure changes and vibrations in the water.
• They roll their eyes back into the sockets to protect them while preying.
• They like their personal space.  Great Whites are the only shark that doesn’t like touching.  You’ll never see a Great White feeding frenzy.
• They constantly regenerate new teeth.  Their bottom jaw has 7 rows of teeth at any one time waiting to replenish those that fall out. 
• There is a social hierarchy based strictly on size.  The smaller shark always gives way to the bigger shark.
• Females grow larger than males.  Males can get up to around 6m, females 7-7.5m, but are believed to be able to grow larger (!!!)
• Their favorite food is whale due to its uber-high energy-content.

Based on my time with the program, I took it upon myself to collate some of the data they’ve been collecting to come up with some sweet insights.  Bar charts, pie charts, the whole shebang. Not gonna lie, it’s actually cool to analyze data on sharks…no offense to all the wrinkle and zit creams I used to analyze, but shark data is way more interesting...

Highlights:

• Total Sightings: 150
• Total Individuals (estimated): 45
• Total Number of Trips: 21
• Average Sightings per Trip: 7
• Average Size: 2.6m
• Share of Females vs. Males: 90% F; 10% M

I LOVE SHARRRRRRKSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!

PS - we did some work tagging smaller species of sharks in the bay.  Pajama sharks, leopard catsharks, etc.  We also took some bait down on a dive with us where we fed, pet, hugged, kissed and “put into tonic” about 15 of these little guys.  So hilarious and awesome.

PPS – I must also note that I met some of the coolest peeps ever while on the program.  Naturally they taught me some phrases in Afrikaans and Xhosa, clicks and all...which is way hard, btw.  I learned how to say, “good morning, how are you, fine thank you, I’m a hungry hippo, you smell like fish, you need a pedicure,” and for those times when tourists do not listen to the fact that you are only allowed to go #1 in the bathroom on the boat, “whose turds are those?”