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SARDINE FEVER
Peter Pinnock

“Paul, do you see any sharks from there?” Mark Addison asked into his two-way radio. Paul Buchel was circling 500 feet above us in his single-engine Piper. The plane banked to one side and Paul’s voice crackled: “There are a few on the inside of the shoal and a big one on the outside”.


That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I had an aqualung strapped to my back and was about to fall off the side of the boat into the writhing mass of fish. Below us the water had turned from blue to dark brown as the shoal of sardines passed beneath the boat. The water around us seemed to boil as the sardines were chased to the surface by predators. They would swarm on the surface and then retreat to deeper water. The smell of the sardines below filled our nostrils as the greasy little fish left a slick that trailed behind them on the surface.

‘Ok, let’s do it,’ called Mark. ‘I’ve come this far’, I thought to myself, ‘there’s no turning back now’. With a camera in one hand and my heart in my throat, I rolled into the water. Below us was an endless, moving mass of fish. Cautiously, we descended into it.

The ‘sardine run’ is an annual phenomenon during the early winter months along the coastline of KwaZulu-Natal. A visitor to the area will be amazed to see copious quantities of the silvery little fish being washed up onto the beaches, to the obvious delight of the local residents. Consumed by ‘sardine fever’ they wade into the water with any suitable container to get their share of the harvest. The sardines aren’t always the main attraction. Following them are a host of predators such as game fish, dolphins, birds and sharks. Large crowds assemble on the beaches to watch the spectacle just beyond the waves...

... At first light the next morning Paul took off and headed south along the Wild Coast. Flying as far as Port St. Johns he spotted only a few small isolated pockets of sardines...

... The ocean was alive with life. Numerous schools of dolphins tirelessly surfed the waves. Above us was the first tell-tale sign that there were sardines nearby: a continuous stream of Cape gannets circled and headed north with us. There was a sense of expectancy in the air. 

DIVE November 2004

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Sharkdiver

We have many things planned for 2004, one of them being our Dive Club. It has grown to over fifty members and now is the time to plan out our first Annual get together. The location has been set and our host dive operator will be Jim Abernethy’s Scuba Adventures in Riviera Beach, Florida. We are working on the itinerary which will include work shops, slide shows, lectures, food, fun and of course shark diving! The scheduled date will be released right after the New Year, so stay posted and get ready.

As far as expeditions, we are batting a thousand! Shark Diver went with our guests and dive club members on three different shark diving adventures this year and had a blast. We traveled to Morehead City, North Carolina in May with Olympus Diving in search of sand tiger sharks. We dove for four days and had sharks on every dive. Next we were off to Guadalupe Island, Mexico with Great White Adventures, for great whites on a five-day trip and again, success. Our last trip of the year was extreme shark diving at its best, an eight-day liveaboard trip with Jim Abernethy’s Scuba Adventures to the wild waters of the Bahamas for great hammerheads and tiger sharks and once again we were not disappointed. With each trip we left with new friends and a Shark Grin®.

Most of our 2004 trip schedule has already been set and we will be chasing new sharks to new places as well as returning to some of our favorites. As we update our trip schedule, we will inform you of any new adventures. So I will close out 2003 by wishing you all a Happy New Year with a hope and a prayer. I hope all your dreams come true, and for our shark friends, I pray for an end to shark fin soup.

Eli Martinez
Editor in chief