{"id":780590,"date":"2026-09-24T02:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T02:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/780590\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T02:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T02:26:12","slug":"great-white-shark-seen-in-false-bay-after-eight-year-absence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/780590\/","title":{"rendered":"Great white shark seen in False Bay after eight-year absence"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sub-adult great white shark<\/a> has been sighted just north of Seal Island in False Bay by clients and crew of African Shark Eco-Charters, a company that runs licensed shark-diving excursions from Simon\u2019s Town.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough there have been some anecdotal reports of great white sightings from time to time, they have literally vanished and this is the first time we have seen them in eight years. So it really was a\u00a0 big surprise when our crew spotted a young shark this morning,\u201d said Rob Lawrence, whose company operates cage diving and tours to spot bronze whaler (copper) sharks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were super-excited \u2013 but it\u2019s too early to say that its back to normal.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

African Shark Eco-Charters crew members Katie Phillipps, Poenas Jacobs, Eddie Kasanhayi and Tshawe Cheminais are heard reacting with excitement as a young great white shark latches on to bait north of Seal Island on September 23. Though the bait is tied to a line, it does not contain a hook and can be released by the shark. (Video clip: African Shark Eco-Charters)<\/p>\n

Veteran naturalist and Simon\u2019s Town whale-watching tour operator Dave Hurwitz said: \u201cI can tell you that there was a lot of excitement today when people heard that a Great White had been spotted here after so long. It was a bit like the second coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know if the bigger adults will also be coming back here, but that is certainly the hope for several of the shark-diving companies that would previously see them on a regular basis hunting for seals, mainly in the summer months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hurwitz said the exact reasons for the disappearance from False Bay of these highly mobile animals remained unclear, but was generally attributed to a combination of reasons including specialist predation by killer whales as well as the impacts of the local fishing industry and shark-net\/bather-protection captures off the KwaZulu-Natal coast.<\/p>\n

Two killer whales in particular (named Port and Starboard owing to their distinctively floppy dorsal fins) have been implicated in deliberately targeting great whites to feed off their fat-rich livers.<\/p>\n

\"StarboardStarboard, one of the two killer whales with distinctive floppy dorsal fins that were linked to the killing of several great white sharks off the Western Cape coast in 2017. (Photo: Dave Hurwitz \/ Simon\u2019s Town Boat Company) \"AA white shark savaged by an orca lies on the beach in Cintsa Bay, in the Eastern Cape, with a common dolphin\u00a0\ufefflying alongside it, which also eaten by the shark. (Photo: Kevin Cole)<\/p>\n

Their role in the killings was later confirmed in a research report<\/a>, co-authored by SanParks marine biologist Dr Alison Kock.<\/p>\n

Kock and fellow biologist Alison Towner reported that killer whales were driving great white sharks from their traditional aggregation sites off the Western Cape.<\/p>\n

They reported the first \u201chighly unusual events\u201d<\/a> happening between February and June 2017 in Gansbaai, where five white shark carcasses were discovered on beaches, with distinct wounds and missing livers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mysterious shark deaths were due to two killer whales, specifically two known shark-hunting specialists, Port and Starboard. Their presence in the area coincided each time with the appearance of the deceased sharks, providing clear evidence of their involvement,\u201d Kock and Towner reported.<\/p>\n

\"SharkShark expert Dr Alison Kock (Photo: Miller & Maclean) <\/p>\n

White shark sightings at the Gansbaai aggregation site significantly declined, and the absence of white sharks increased after each predation event, eventually resulting in complete abandonment of the site for two-and-a-half years.<\/p>\n

They also found that presence of the killer whales triggered an immediate flight response and prolonged absence from the area. \u00a0The absence of white sharks, in turn, created a void that another predator, the bronze whaler shark, filled.<\/p>\n

Drone and helicopter footage later revealed the unique behaviour of the killers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne killer whale held a white shark in a semi-inverted position, potentially inducing a motionless state known as tonic immobility. The killer whales appeared to use a specialised foraging tactic, focusing on the energy-rich liver of the sharks while leaving the rest of the carcass behind,\u201d Kock and Towner wrote.<\/p>\n

There was also a significant similar change in the behaviour of white sharks in Mossel Bay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe implications of killer whale predation on white sharks are far-reaching. The South African white shark population, already small and facing numerous human-induced threats, experienced further displacement from their natural aggregation sites due to the presence of the shark-hunting killer whales.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in Simon\u2019s Town, crew members of African Shark Eco-Charters are preparing for a second trip to Seal Island on Thursday, 24 September.<\/p>\n

MD Karen Lawrence emphasised that while they were very excited to have spotted a young white shark after an absence of eight years it did not mean that they were \u201cback\u201d for good. DM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A sub-adult great white shark has been sighted just north of Seal Island in False Bay by clients…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":780591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[257223,257224,33461,53654,90,257225,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-780590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-alison-kock","tag-false-bay","tag-great-white-sharks","tag-killer-whales","tag-science","tag-seal-island","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/780591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}