Durban | Saturday
DESPITE sweltering heat, bathers and surfers in South Africa’s eastern KwaZulu-Natal province are wary of plunging into the Indian Ocean after a mysterious succession of shark attacks.
Since New Year’s Day, sharks have attacked people three times, Sheldon Dudley, a biologist at the Natal Sharks Board (NSB) in Durban, said. On average, just one or two attacks are reported annually and the cause of this spate remains unclear.
“There have also been reported cases of scavenging,” Dudley said.
Morning patrons at the port city’s BAT Centre, a bayside entertainment and restaurant venue, recently watched a shark circle and nibble at a floating corpse, thought to have been that of a security guard who vanished a fortnight earlier.
“Our initial visual post-mortem indicates that a shark or sharks scavenged on the corpse as an arm and leg were missing,” police Superintendent Vish Naidoo said.
Common sense about venturing into the water at night or during prime hunting hours around dusk and dawn is one precaution, while around 29 kilometres of prized beaches are protected by nets.
But the netting is costly to maintain, at up to R13-million ($1,1-million) a year, NSB deputy chief executive Norman Wynn said.
Nets are disliked by environmentalists, who regard them as potential deathtraps for the common, bottleneck and humpback dolphins on the coastline.
On January 1, a young doctor, Michael Van Niekerk, was surf-skiing in the vicinity of Mtunzini Beach, on the northeastern coast near Zululand.
“No sooner had he dangled his feet over the side of the ski when he was bitten by a shark. Fortunately, he escaped with minor injuries as there was no irreparable damage to any tissues, nerves or blood vessels,” Dudley said.
Worse was soon to come.
Imraan Sheik (17) said he fished for a living in order to “to put food on my impoverished family’s table”.
His harrowing experience occurred on January 4 in knee-deep water in Durban Harbour. He was about to cast his line when he heard a splash behind him.
The next thing he knew, the jaws of death were clamped on his right leg and he fell face first to be dragged more than 20 metres into deeper water. Without panicking, he fought off the predator.
“I viciously kicked at it with my left leg,” he said.
“I broke my ankle as I twisted around, and this possibly caused the shark to lose its grip on my right leg.”
His nightmare did not end there.
“The sharked simply circled back towards me, mouth wide open to reveal huge, razor-sharp teeth.
For a moment, it appeared as if the shark was smiling at me.”
Sheik instinctively lashed out with his fishing rod.
“It broke as the shark shut its mouth and I repeatedly stabbed at it with the piece that remained in my hand. The shark then turned and seemingly disappeared for a moment.”
As the youth desperately swam for the shore, the shark pursued his trail of blood, turning away only as he managed to get out of the water with the help of a couple of friends and other anglers.
Sheik lost his right leg. A well-wisher has offered to finance a prosthetic limb for the teenager, who wonders how he can support two younger siblings without both his limbs.
“Despite the trauma, I will have to go back to fishing to supplement my family’s income. I know many people who fish to eke out an existence.
“I know what it is to be desperate and can’t ask them to stop. All I can do is appeal to them to exercise more caution.”
What attacked him? Sheik estimates that it was about three metres long, while Dudley said circumstantial evidence suggested a Zambezi shark, which grows up to that length, was responsible.
The NSB believes that a similar shark knocked Laird Shooter, who miraculously escaped unharmed, off his surf-ski as he was fishing at Umlaut Beach, north of Durban, on January 18. Shooter was charged and flung into the air when “a long, black outline” seeking its prey beneath his ski “shifted its focus from the fish to me”.
Fragments of shark’s teeth embedded in the back of the surf-ski are grisly evidence of Shooters close encounter.
While spear fishermen encounter sharks the most frequently because of bleeding prey in the water, they are quick to detect the predators and armed to ward off attack, Dudley said.
Anglers and surfers are the prime human targets. Attacks on recreational bathers are virtually non-existent even, off the western Cape Coast where there are no nets.
Dudley said the KOBE had to work on medical reports from the hospital that treated Sheik and tooth samples from the Umlaut attack conclusively to ascertain the species of shark involved.
“Historically, a number of attacks in our waters have been carried out by Zambezi sharks. They are also known to make their charges from deeper waters to the shallow edges as happened at the harbour incident,” he added.
Zambezi and tiger sharks favour the warm KwaZulu-Natal waters, while great whites are found around the cooler western Cape. At sea, Mako sharks sometimes pursue fish hooked by boats, an activity which can cause panic when they jump up on to the deck. -AFP