Shark Savers - Shark Nets in South Africa: O, what a tangled net we weave

Shark Nets in South Africa: O, what a tangled net we weave

By Pamela Le Noury for Shark Savers
Pamela is a marine scientist who is frequently involved in shark tagging efforts in South Africa.
Photography by Fiona Ayerst

On 30 September 2007 a mother and calf Humpback whale got caught in the shark nets off Amanzimtoti. Their thrashing around got the attention of the public who reported it to the lifeguards and the Natal Sharks Board. The mother whale freed herself and although the response by lifeguard and sharks board boats was very quick, the calf drowned.

Humpback whale

This is a great tragedy for the mother whale that made an incredible journey to have that calf. The same fate has met other calves over the years and will continue to recur so long as there are whales and nets in the same area. The irony is that, in a roundabout way, the nets are there because of the whales.

The Humpback whales that we see every year off Durban usually live in the freezing waters of the southern ocean around the Antarctic. The cooler waters hold more oxygen and therefore sustain more plankton, in turn more fish and generally more life. Humpback whales eat small morsels such as krill which flourish in the cooler waters, as do the whales. But being warm blooded mammals in near zero temperatures is not always easy, especially for new born calves, and it is for this reason that the whales make an enormous and epic journey half way across the globe towards the equator to breed, where the calves have a much better chance of survival in the warmer waters.

At the end of summer, many female whales will have been pregnant for almost a year. They start to leave the secluded Antarctic waters at this time and head north. The journey is long and tiresome, usually crossing the enormous currents that swirl around the uninterrupted oceans down south. The whales that come towards the east coast of Africa each year will further be confronted with the Agulhas current, one of the most powerful forces on earth. They must swim directly against this current and keep heading north until they eventually reach subtropical and tropical waters off Mozambique where the water is sufficiently warm to calve. Many follow the contour of the land masses up the east coast, the gauntlet includes large ports like Durban with many ships. They will pass the old whaling stations on the bluff where thousands of their kind met their fate. Many of the larger whales around today will have been around during the whaling days.

The impressiveness of this journey is compounded by the fact that the whales barely eat the entire time! The opportunities to feed up here are almost non existent and the whales may spend months without food. It is an enormous sacrifice to make. In addition, males making the journey are trying to mate which means: courtship. The courting rituals of Humpback whales include, among other things, singing and breaching. Can you imagine the energy used to launch a 40 tone animal clear out of the water? It is quite astounding.

Whale trapped in net

The whales calve along the way, and quite quickly start heading back south since now the whale cows are nursing the calves with extremely rich milk, further depleting their energy. There are once again dangers on the journey back home such as ships, or bull whales who would have the cows mate again and would kill the calf in order to achieve this. For this reason the cow calf pairs try to be as discreet as possible and generally move closer to the shore than on the northward journey. And when they reach KZN a whole new danger is posed: shark nets. Last year a cow calf pair made it all the way past Durban, past the old whaling station, to the next swimming beach at Amanzimtoti before they were entangled in the shark nets. The mother was too large to stay trapped for long and she thrashed about to shrug off the net. The calf was too small to free itself, and could not stay without air for as long, and was panicked. The mother was panicking too and paced around her entrapped calf. The calf drowned, boats arrive, they freed the body and dragged it out to sea. The mother stayed there the entire day. She was devastated, she made an enormous sacrifice, a year of pregnancy, a successful birth, suckling the calf and protecting it from the myriad of dangers out there while starving and rushing to get back to the Antarctic. Losing a calf is nature, losing a calf to a shark net is not.

Shark net.

In the 1930s only 2 shark attacks took place in KwaZulu Natal, but between 1940 and 1952 there were 32 shark attacks, 21 occurring off Durban and 7 of those fatal. People were in a state of panic. 7 gill nets, 130m long each were installed off Durban’s beaches in 1952 and things improved for a few years as thousands of sharks were captured and killed in the nets. But in the summer of 1957-1958, a spate of shark attacks resulting in 5 deaths over 107 days and dubbed ‘Black December’, left holiday towns reeling in shock as tourists flocked home in horror of the carnage.

The navy started depth-charging, physical cage-like barriers were installed but later abandoned as they were unsuitable in the high impact surf. By 1962 modern shark nets were installed at more beaches and by 1966 fifteen beaches had net installations in place.

Since the installation of the shark nets, combined with increased fishing effort, shark numbers have been systematically reduced, and the chances of shark attack have dropped to near zero. The nets were very effective in reducing shark numbers, thereby providing a solution to the economic and humanitarian crisis that ensued after 'Black December’.

Shark trapped in net

In 1975s two things happened that changed the lives of sharks forever. Peter Benchley’s film JAWS was released and pretty much sealed the fate of millions of sharks worldwide over the next few decades by creating mass hysteria over the science fictional evil inherent in all sharks. This put the omnipresent fear of sharks in the hearts and minds of every movie watching human being on the planet, and a fear that continues to permeate society today.

The other event was the end of whaling. This is much more related to the fate of sharks than people realise, because it was the whaling station which attracted and sustained such an abnormally large population of abnormally large sharks. The whaling station killing thousands of whales and sending a bloody, oily slick of whale juice up and down the coast from the Bluff. Moving with the wind and current, this smorgasbord of shark bait would arrive at Durban’s beaches to the north or Amanzimtoti to the south, the exact sites of the most shark attacks during the peak of the whaling industry. Furthermore, several whales were lost entirely to the sharks as they would bite through the blubber and sink the entire whale en route to the shore. This high-energy endless supply of whale meat created super-sized sharks, in enormous numbers that probably inspired dear Mr Benchley’s imagination.

The end of whaling in 1975 should have gradually allowed for the end of the super-shark, shark numbers would have normalised, and the nets could have been reduced accordingly. But with everyone incited against sharks by this time, there was not a hope on earth shark conservation would begin.

Shark trapped in net.

Shark nets are not barriers, sharks can move freely in and out of the nets. They can also see the nets a lot of time, and avoid them. They can move between the nets, under the nets, around the nets and in from the sides without even coming near the nets. People are often shocked to realise this, but it’s no secret. The nets work by gradually reducing shark numbers over time, thereby reducing human-shark encounters, thereby reducing the chances of a shark attack. They have worked very well, so well in fact that statistically speaking the chances of getting eaten by a shark are about zero. But they work by reducing shark numbers, not by preventing access to the beach by sharks.

What this means is that if you remove all the shark nets today, you are not at risk of shark attack today, you are at risk in a decade or 2 when shark numbers have recovered. But with all the other, larger threats to sharks today, they are more likely to be extinct in a decade or 2 than for their numbers to recover. You are no more protected at a netted beach than at an adjacent non netted beach since the ‘fishing effect’ of the nets will have reduced shark numbers on both beaches (the ‘dangerous’ sharks roam over large areas, and aren’t confined to a particular beach). In fact it can be argued that you are safer at a non netted beach adjacent to a netted beach over the weekend when the nets are not serviced, therefore any animal caught in the nets on a Friday or Saturday or Sunday will spend the rest of the weekend essentially chumming the water. But again, the risk is so low, shark numbers are so depleted, that this ‘risk’ is purely hypothetical.

Turtle trapped in net

These days almost 90% of the net captures are considered harmless species: there are only 3 - 5 shark species considered dangerous, out of over 100 species in Southern Africa and over 440 in the world. Harmless sharks make up the bulk of the captures, and other animals get caught too: dolphins, rays, turtles, sea birds, large fish and whales.

The shark nets are systematically being complemented with drum lines. An anchored hook is baited off the bathing area and any sharks in the bathing area should be attracted to this trap. This is theoretically an improvement on the nets in terms of by-catch. Whale, dolphin, ray and turtle captures will be reduced significantly. It’s hard to say what it will do for the sharks: there are arguments that it will have a negative impact on certain vulnerable species, and arguments that it will be better off for sharks in general. Time will tell, but sharks don’t have that much time.

Shark trapped in net

Shark populations are actually in such a bad state these days that whale carcasses are floating ashore almost untouched. Sick and dead dolphins are washing up on beaches, and sperm whale carcasses that come from hundreds of kilometres out to sea, spending weeks floating around before they reach the shore are still intact. Human corpses from drownings are discovered 8-14 days later untouched. People are worried about being attacked by a shark in their swimming pools, but a rotting corpse goes unnoticed….where are all the sharks?

Another whale calf has died in the nets. It’s a tragedy for the mother, but the steadily growing Humpback population can probably sustain this loss. The tragedy is that the nets are still in place, when all the reasons to install the nets have disappeared. The tragedy is that everyone cares much more for a whale calf which enjoys protection by a global ban on whaling, than for the hundreds of sharks dying every year in the nets or the estimated 100 million sharks that die every year worldwide, and who have no protection. The tragedy is that our whaling operations caused a boom in shark numbers, and an insignificant amount of high-publicity human deaths resulted in the mass global extermination of sharks for decades to come.

Shark trapped in net

The death of a whale off Amanzimtoti, the site where several people were killed by sharks exactly 50 years ago, indirectly as a result of us killing whales in the first place is laced with a tragic irony that will be missed by most people. The plight of sharks and the wastefulness of the shark nets are highlighted by the rare death of a whale instead of the frequent death of hundreds of endangered sharks. It is indeed a tangled and misunderstood net we have weaved.

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Diana Taylor said:

I believe it's the shark's appearance which causes fear in humans. With eyes reminiscent of snakes (also a much feared creature) and a mouth full of razor sharp teeth and no kissable lips, it's no wonder there is a misconception of the shark's value. They have very few physical characteristics which can be easily personified, a trait humans need in order to make a connection.

I created Pug At The Beach whose central character is a dog with a dorsal fin and a really nice collection of surfing shorts. He's an ordinary dog but people have fallen in love with him mostly because they can relate to him.

Until people can fall in love with the shark either as love-able or relate-able I'm afraid the shark will remain a target of destruction and extinction.

Keep spreading the word. (I found you in The Sandoway House in Delray Beach, Florida.

Diana Taylor
Top Dog
Pug At The Beach
Delray Beach, FL
www.PugAtTheBeach.com

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September 23, 2008 | url
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Dwayne Franks said:

	When will it stop? With all the blogs I read a day on this I have to wonder what do we all need to do to get it to stop? Is it we just don't know how to get the Government to see that they must stop. Or are we just not doing what we say we are ? I know as of today " I " am going to try something different to get better results. We have to try something before its to late. Good luck to us all....
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September 18, 2008
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Amanda said:

	I used to think that sharks we scary and evil. But as soon as I started scuba diving seeing these wonderfully graceful creatures face to face I began to realize just how important and completly magnificent they really are. Sharks are the reason I dive now. They are beautiful creature that god has created. I just hope that more people learn to realize that before its too late.
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September 07, 2008
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emma said:

	if we keep killing these wonderful creatures then there will be no more left. if there is no more left then there is no more ecosystem we would kill our ecosystem
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August 29, 2008 | url
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emma said:

	i can not belive this has happened its all because of humans its your fault think about that for a second your fault we need to put a stop to this immeditly yours sincerely, emma
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August 29, 2008 | url
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Brendal Davis said:

As we all know, sharks don't smile like dolphins and whales do. Sharks don't make cool noises or save people, but that doesn't mean they don't have just as equal importance as any other marine animal out there, if not more. Its true, because humans can profit from sharks by watching them jump around and do tricks, the only thing we can do it put up nets, by-catch, and of course fin them to death. The shark is the only apex predator that humans have not destroyed and drove to extinction, but its close. People will pay for what we are doing, we need the public to understand their is a big problem right now, please help save these beautiful mysterious creatures of the past.

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July 31, 2008 | url
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Dwayne Franks said:

	Sorry about the typing on the comment will check before posting next time .
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July 26, 2008
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Dwayne Franks said:

Its funny how we can sit and watch a show on Orka ( Killer Whales ) eating Gray Whales or Seals and tink that is just how it is . But if we watch a Shake do the same thing to a Whale or Seal we gasp and are afraid . I think because we cant use the Shark as a play toy or a pet as we do with the Orka and Seals at Sea World we have no attachment to them . So when we see them being killed by the thousands it is easy to look the other way . There is no Greenpeace for sharks. I know there are Movements for sharks , but when greenpeace came out there were save the Whales sticker and shirts everwhere. We need some how the get the public behind the Shark . I know its hard to get peolpe behind something that can kill them , but if we dont and all the Sharks are killed we as people will pay for it dearly . Lets hope we can get People together before its to late. God speed .

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July 26, 2008
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carl holmes said:

	this is apauling we cant go on the way we are , we need to change before its to late i plead to govermnets around the world to take action to end by-catch for good
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