By Wendell Roelf
CAPE TOWN, April 25 (Reuters) – Luring great white sharks
with a smelly mixture of fish and oil in South Africa’s False
Bay has triggered a wave of anger, with surfers and swimmers
calling for a ban on the practice following a fatal shark attack
a week ago.
A growing attraction over the past several years in one of
Africa’s biggest tourist destinations, Cape Town, has been
underwater dives with sharks, with operators clouding waters
with a bloody mixture called “chum” to attract the predators.
Many marine experts doubt if chumming changes the behaviour
of sharks in the region, which include great white sharks as
long as mini-buses that weigh upwards of four tonnes.
But the practice has rattled surfers, swimmers and kayakers,
especially after a suspected great white shark ripped the leg
off of David Lilienfeld, 20, last week, killing the champion
body-boarder..
Data shows since 2000 there have been 10 shark attacks
around Cape Town’s coast, five of them fatal, including
Lilienfeld.
“This is an animal that kills people when it comes into
confrontation with people. So let’s not make them aggressive.
Let’s not dangle bait in front of them and stuff like that,” Cas
Collier, a former big wave world champion, said at Surfer’s
Corner, Muizenberg beach in the bay.
Sharks are drawn to the area to feed on the large number of
seals at Seal Island, a rocky outcrop in the middle of False
Bay. Once hunted for sport trophies, great whites have been a
protected species in South African waters since 1991.
“It goes without saying that chumming in False Bay must be
banned until we have a better understanding of shark behaviour
and the potential for habituation,” said surfer John Gasson in a
published letter.
Continued…
