Sharks were part of the scene long before people settled along the coast of southern Africa, long before the village of Gansbaai was established, and long before the local population came to depend on these apex predators for their livelihood. To local residents, sharks seemed to have been a part of life forever … but would this guarantee their survival into the future?
A Great White shark getting a close look at the cage and boat.
Dave Caravias
Shark fishing has been practised in South Africa since the arrival of the early European settlers in the mid-17th century. Shark gill-net fishing first started off the KwaZulu-Natal coastline in the 1930s. Early landings of about 100 tonnes had risen steeply to 1,000 tonnes by 1940, thanks to the demand for shark-liver oil, which was a rich source of vitamin A.
Sharks have also been important contributors for many years to the economy of Gansbaai in South Africa’s Western Cape. In 1939 a small factory was built here to process vitamin A from shark livers, and to extract the liver oil, which was used as a lubricant. The factory thrived during World War II but declined after the war ended.
Then, in 1950, Johannes Barnard, the principal of the local Gansbaai school, persuaded fishermen to get together and set up South Africa’s first Fishery Co-operative. Finance was obtained from the Fisheries Development Corporation, the harbour was deepened, and a modern fish-meal factory was established here in 1952. The industry became a major employer, although Gansbaai was still a relatively quiet – even sleepy – Western Cape fishing town. And so it remained until the 1990s, when the influence of the Great White shark began to be felt as cage diving burgeoned and rapidly took over as the major local employer.
Shark Alley runs between Dyer Island and Geyser Rock, two small islands that are located 8 kilometres offshore from Gansbaai’s neighbouring Kleinbaai harbour. Shark Alley is patrolled by Great White sharks, which prey on the 60,000 Cape fur seals resident in a colony on Geyser Rock. During the 1990s the Dyer Island area came to be acknowledged by scientists and film-makers as a great place to study and film the sharks, and documentary films introduced Great Whites to global audiences.
By the start of the new century, cage diving with Great Whites was attracting ever-increasing numbers of wide-eyed shark fans, and the ‘shark town’ of Gansbaai had started styling itself the ‘Great White shark capital of the world’. Nowadays, there are few people among Gansbaai’s population of about 30,000 who don’t have a connection to the ecotourism industry that has grown up around the iconic sharks.
Shark Alley runs between Dyer Island and Geyser Rock.
David Edwards
Getting to see a shark breaching is a bonus for shark fans.
Hennie Otto
In 1975 film director Steven Spielberg turned author Peter Benchley’s story about a Great White shark into a suspense-packed worldwide blockbuster. The film Jaws chilled and thrilled audiences everywhere and cemented the Great White’s position as the world’s wildlife archvillain. In the fictional Jaws, the presence of a Great White threatened the prosperity of a New England summer resort town called Amity.
It is impossible not to be impressed by a Great White only a couple of metres away.
Dave Caravias
Great White shark ecotourism provides hundreds of jobs at sea and on land, and supports many others reliant on what has become Gansbaai’s biggest employment sector.
Dave Caravias
A Great White shark investigating – not attacking – a shark diving cage.
Dave Caravias
A couple of decades later, in real life and across the globe, this same species of shark would prove to be a welcome and celebrated visitor, would launch tourism and bring prosperity to a small South African fishing village. Working out of the little harbour of Kleinbaai, cage-diving operators were ferrying tourists from all over the world out to Dyer Island for a date with the real ‘Jaws’: at peak times the eight established operators were each doing three trips a day, catering for up to 500 enthusiasts daily. And, conversely, it was the sudden disappearance of the Great Whites that would send an economic shiver through the ‘Great White shark capital of the world’.
Hotels, booking agencies, guesthouses, restaurants, curio shops, taxis and others had all, to a degree, come to rely directly or indirectly on their unlikely toothy friends. Across Walker Bay from Gansbaai is the world-famous whale-watching town of Hermanus, where local businesses were also benefitting from the nearby cage-diving industry. The eight Gansbaai cage-diving operators directly employed about 200 people, and it is safe to say that over 1,000 people from the towns of Kleinbaai, neighbouring Gansbaai and Hermanus were, in one way or another, involved in Great White shark tourism and science.
For the first 16 years of the new century cage-diving operators flourished. They bought bigger boats; new support businesses opened, and a comfortable feeling of prosperity settled over the coastal towns. Year after year, profits were made and reliance on shark ecotourism increased. If, for any reason, Dyer Island’s sharks ever disappeared, their absence would threaten Gansbaai as much as the presence of a fictional shark had threatened Amity Island.
Christmas is high holiday time in South Africa, and in late December 2015 Shark Town was buzzing. Gansbaai’s high street was decorated with Christmas lights depicting sharks and other marine animals, the tills in local businesses were ringing, and seasonal gaiety combined with prosperity to produce an almost tangible air of happiness and wellbeing.
The vibe seemed to travel across the sea to the shallows near Dyer Island, where the cage-diving boats were busy chumming for sharks. There were five boats at anchor, and three others had left their cages at sea while they headed back to Kleinbaai to drop clients off and then collect their next groups of shark watchers. Four of the five boats had sharks around them, and crews were busy getting people in and out of cages, while others worked bait lines to keep the sharks interested.
It was a perfect summer day in every way: the sea was flat and calm, with only a slight swell, the sky was deep blue and cloudless and, unusually for the area, the water was clear, affording good visibility. The sharks could be seen for several metres below the surface, and excited human cries and whoops split the air while dorsal fins sliced through the water.
In the ‘Great White shark capital of the world’, sharks are even part of Christmas.
Bo Wixted
The Great White House occupies a dominant position in Kleinbaai at the top of Geelbek Street, which is lined with cage-diving businesses all the way down to the water. It houses the cage-diving operator Marine Dynamics, the Dyer Island Conservation Trust (DICT) and Dyer Island Cruises. A woman wearing a blue jacket with ‘Marine Dynamics’ emblazoned on her back led a human crocodile, everyone wearing life jackets, out of the Great White House and down the slope towards the harbour, where a large catamaran named Slashfin waited to take them out to sea. The harbour and shore areas and Geelbek Street were all packed with people. Fluttering flags, colourful clothing and loud chatter combined to create a carnival atmosphere.
High season in Shark Town: boats come and go from Kleinbaai’s little harbour.
Richard Peirce
The Great White House occupies a commanding position at the top of Geelbek Street.
Richard Peirce
At the lower end of the street, outside the White Shark Cage Diving premises, a tourist from the north of England was busy sending photos back home to her boyfriend. Then she called him, screaming with excitement as she described her encounter with Great White sharks.
It was just another day in Shark Town, and all was normal and right with the world. No-one could have guessed that an unforeseen danger was lurking out in the ocean and heading for Walker Bay, a danger that would shake Shark Town and threaten the futures of all those engaged in shark ecotourism. The possibility of the nightmare scenario that would soon develop had never entered people’s minds. But the nightmare was approaching, and in early 2016 it would become reality – when the sharks disappeared.