| The White Shark Trust Field Research Assistantship is proud to introduce you to our assistants:
Alex BROWN (Burnham, England), Trey SNOW (Wilmington, North Carolina, USA), Nicolas PADE (Nivaa, Denmark) and John NICHOLS (La Jolla, California, USA). |
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On Saturday the 23rd of October 2004, we went to sea in the late morning after a good night sleep from the late party night... Beautiful weather and perfect sea conditions at first. We first did our shore transect along Haibaai, and we observed nine different White Sharks swiming within 200 meters from shore in water less than three meters deep... |
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| In the photograph above, you can see a large adult (possibly male) Cape Fur Seal swimming in the breakers (20-30 meters from shore), and the dark outline of a Great White Shark swimming along the beach just another 20 meters further out than the Seal... |
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| Just before anchoring, the breeze changed direction and picked up to a strong and cold southerly wind... We anchored in a sheltered area called Geelbekgat, protected by a reef and kelp patch stretching from the coast to Dyer Island. We observed another five different White Sharks during today's choppy afternoon. Nick stayed at home to rest and recover... |  |
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On Sunday the 24th of October, our assistants were invited to go out on Barracuda (Shark Diving Unlimited) for two trips. Lamnidae had to remain temporarily out of the water due to a small hole which would be fixed on Monday. They had a great time on Barracuda and observed over ten different White Sharks. |
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| On Monday the 25th of October, while Lamnidae was getting fixed, our assistants went on a roadtrip to the Southernmost tip of Africa with Tracey.
Michael decided that it was time to equip Lamnidae with a new set of engine covers. Our present engine socks have lasted us for over a year, but now they are in a really bad state as you can see from the pictures. The large cuts are from several White Sharks who thought our engines looked tasty... These covers are probably the easiest and cheapest prevention tool that can be implemented to prevent White Sharks from injuring themselves against the engines. Unfortunately, to date, only one commercial cage-diving operator is using them... |
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Tracey, Alex, Nick, Trey and John drove to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa and geographical meeting point of the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans.
They then drove to a small fishing village, Arniston, to have lunch and enjoy the wonderful beach and the warmer waters of the Indian ocean... |
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| Tuesday the 26th of October... A huge storm far offshore turned the ocean to hell... We launched Lamnidae is relatively rough conditions, and the sea just got rougher during the day. We observed eight different Sharks today. We very happy to be back on shore (especially Nick) after five hours spent in two to three meter swell... |  |
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| A few photographs taken today of one of the commercial cage diving boats anchored 50 meters to our side... They had one crazy Shark who half-breached onto their bait on several occasions... maybe the same one as in the picture above... |
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