Surfers and paddlers had a close encounter with a great white shark in Plettenberg Bay on June 23. Drone footage of a shark swimming too close for comfort has further enforced the NSRI‘s warning to be cautious when entering the ocean along the southern coast.
A video posted on Instagram shows a group of surfers and paddlers in the crystal clear sea as an enormous great white approaches. The shark gets quite close and the surfers seem calm. Then, most of the group catch a wave and return to shore.
The video, posted by ‘Zach B,’ who calls himself ‘A 14-year-old boy who took up a lockdown hobby to capture his love for the ocean from the skies,’ was captioned: ‘SPEECHLESS.’
‘Witnessing what was going on my screen while frantically making my way down to the beach to warn the surfers made for a pretty crazy afternoon for young old me,’ he added.
Take a look at the surfers and their finned friend:
Great white sharks have been spotted increasingly less and less around the coasts of South Africa in recent years. ‘Between 2010 and 2016, spotters recorded an average of 205 white shark sightings per year at their operating beaches during the spring and summer period.
‘However, in 2018 the total number of shark sightings recorded fell to only 50, and this year [2019] there has not been a single confirmed white shark sighting by the spotters,’ City of Cape Town said in a statement last year.
The seemingly increased shark activity recently observed could be an indicator of numbers starting to rise.
Great white sharks are the largest predatory shark on earth and can be found in South African waters along with over 100 other shark species, says the Two Oceans Aquarium.
They can grow up to 6m long and accelerate to a speedy 56km/h. These predators can live for up to 70 years.
Image credit: Screenshot
