Shorelines

by Chris Marais

  The effect of the shark cage-diving business on the little town of Gans Bay was astounding.

  “Just take my business alone. I employ 11 locals,” he told us. “I buy my petrol and bait there. Then there’s the knock-on effect: meals, guesthouses, tours, T-shirts. The eight operators here take out 30 000 visitors a year, at an average of R1 000 a time. That’s a R30-million annual turnover. It’s an established industry.”

  And because the shark cage-diving excursions had become such an entrenched, important sector of the local economy, the controversy about the effects of cage-diving on shark behaviour had been carefully watched from the sidelines.

  Great white sharks were killing people along the southern coast of the Cape and beyond. Shark numbers were increasing. Had cage-diving made the sharks identify humans with food? Was it because there were more humans in the water, looking like seals in their wet suits? Everyone agreed that sharks preferred to keep to their diet of seals (readily available from places like Dyer Island), but people were still being attacked in the waters around here.

  Back in Cape Town, Jules and I had spoken to Dr Len Compagno, the ‘curator of fishes’ at the South African Museum. The US-born conservationist said there were more coconut-related deaths in this world than shark attacks.

  “I lived in the Philippines once and I can tell you, those coconuts can be deadly,” he said with the type of deadpan delivery I last saw at a comedy club in Los Angeles. “What about drowning? Do you know how many people drown? Why don’t they do something about that? The whole thing is just hyperventilation, it’s the sky falling on Chicken Little’s head.”

  Dr Compagno said the world should worry about real issues, such as man-on-shark violence.

  “The harvesting of shark fins is dreadfully destructive,” he said. “Fishermen just hoist the shark up, hack its dorsal fin off and throw it back to die a slow, painful death. The market for fins outstrips the shark populations. The Chinese use it as a feel-good meal for weddings. And the irony of it is: if it weren’t for the added stock, shark-fin soup would be tasteless.”

  Sharks are not serial man-eaters, according to Dr Compagno. Much of the problem is that sharks, lacking hands, use their mouths to explore live objects in the water. And an exploratory nip from that array of razor-teeth often proves fatal to humans.

  “There’s no proof of a connection between the cage-diving industry and shark attacks on swimmers,” says Compagno.

  We asked Brian McFarlane why cage-diving with sharks had become so popular. It was by far the most sought-after adventure activity among foreign tourists visiting the province.

  “I put it down to Jaws,” he said. “The book and the movie scared people out of the water – and into a boat. Jaws made sharks into monsters, but it also gave them a mystique. People want that thrill of being safe in the presence of the monster.

  “I love my sharks. A day without sharks is a day without sunshine.”

  And what sunshine these sharks brought to operators and their tourists. It immediately became obvious that each shark had its own character and preferences. Some seemed playful and curious. Some were shy, contenting themselves with circling the boat. Others were aggressive and surged after the tuna bait like starved prisoners. There was one well-known fish that liked to be tickled just in front of its gills. In fact, it would keep returning to the boat concerned, just to be tickled there once again.

  Don’t make the mistake of thinking the sharks loiter about tourist boats, habituated to a daily snort of chum. Most are only passing through, many on epic cross-oceanic voyages, such as one great white female, satellite-tagged and nicknamed Nicole. In 99 days she migrated briskly from Gans Bay to Australia and back again, the fastest trip by a marine animal ever recorded.

  And now we were going to try out Predator II on a bright October day in 2005 as part of the Shorelines journey. Brian would not be with us, but skipper for the day would be Rozier (Rozy) Steensma, the spitting image of the rock musician Huey Lewis.

  We had a full complement of tourists, including Anna and Stu Durand from Brighton, England.

  “I was enthralled by Jaws,” said Stu. “It’s been a lifelong dream to see a great white shark up close.” Not only had they managed to photograph the perfect ‘whale tail’ a few days before but they’d just come from the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park where, in addition to seeing the rare Kalahari lions, they’d captured a desert leopard on their little digital cameras. I was hoping to get all that within the next decade or so.

  At first, the sharks were slow to arrive. Then, as they scented the chum in the water, they began cruising around the boat. People fell over themselves to get the perfect picture, and I prayed no one would fall in right then. It would be very bad timing, and a potential blow to the industry in general. No tourist likes a real-life death. It’s like a Ferris wheel breaking off and rolling out of the fairground.

  Stu and Anna threw on wet suits and joined three others in the large cage attached to the side of the boat. The sharks followed a lump of tuna right up to the caged tourists and, when it was whipped away, began attacking one of the inflatable pillows holding the cage buoyant.

  Anna eventually came out, in a very excited state. She grabbed her cellphone and contacted her six-year-old son back in England.

  “He’s huge, darling, I can see him now. He’s at least 4 metres long. He’s coming up to the boat now, right as I’m speaking to you.” Which put us in mind of a game drive in the bushveld some time ago, when we had to sit and listen to an excited someone in the vehicle describing a lion to her boyfriend back at home – also by cellphone.

  Stu, in the meantime, was staying below and drinking in every bit of adrenaline on offer.

  I liked the close-up shark experience, but Jules and I both thought the operators could have been a little gentler with their sharks. Many of the fish carried scars from encounters with boat engines, possibly cages as well.

  The star of the show definitely deserved better treatment – without them, the folks on board Predator II would have to spend hours watching seals barking at each other. Which, compared with encounters with great whites, was a bit like watching sleepy old men play chess in the park.

  The shark cage-diving business brought people closer to the great white populations than ever before. They went out for the thrill of fear, they returned with deep respect for the fish in question. People like Brian McFarlane didn’t have to break dishes in guesthouses, tourists visiting these shores had another all-day adventure option and the sharks got to strut their fearsome stuff in the water.

  “It’s all about showmanship,” said André Hartman when we collared him back on land. “You have to tell the people the right stories and entertain them.” André, who no longer had an operator’s licence, was thinking of packing up his ‘shark show’ and heading for the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.

  “The Baja Peninsula is great for sharks,” he said. “Plus, the visibility is much better and there’s yellowfin tuna fishing out there …”

  Chapter 16: Gans Bay

  Perlemoen Party

  As the black storm clouds approach from the ocean, the atmosphere around Danger Point lighthouse is electric. Rich afternoon sunlight is offset by nervous streaks of lightning on the horizon. The lichen-splattered boulders leading down to the coastline are split and scored by millions of years of battering by waves. The ocean booms and thuds on the edge of the jagged land, as though demanding entry.

  If you stand at the marker below the lighthouse and follow its directions out to sea, you’ll find yourself staring at the exact spot where the troopship HMS Birkenhead went down on 25 February 1852. She was carrying British soldiers, reinforcements for the Border wars with the Xhosa. She was doing about eight knots when she hit a rock just more than 2 km south-west of Danger Point.

  The bottom of the ship was torn out. Only three of the eight lifeboats could be released into the sea. All the women and children were ordered into the boats and the men were told to hold back.
As the Birkenhead sank, the soldiers and sailors on board tried to swim to shore, and the sharks cruising in the area feasted. Out of the 630 on board, 454 died.

  These days, the likes of the Birkenhead would be guided to safety along the southern Cape coastline by the beam of the Danger Point lighthouse, which flashes in short bursts of three. In his eyrie above the shoreline, the lighthouse keeper sees all. Out to sea there are the passing ships and there is the coming storm. Below him, along the paths leading to the water, men come streaming towards their vehicles parked along the main road. They are the perlemoen poachers, and no one gets in their way. They carry their bags of booty – the real sunken treasure around here – with a pirate’s swagger and head off home.

  “I see the poachers,” Colin Olivier, the lighthouse keeper tells us. “But it’s not our business to catch them so we stay out of it.”

  Abalone. Perlemoen. What’s the fuss? As a Jo’burg-based landlubber I used to see these perlemoen busts on the evening-news broadcasts. There, in the featureless face-brick courtyard of someone’s home somewhere in an industrial suburb, uniformed cops would be dragging out bags of what looked like ashtrays. The TV reporter would tell me that they had a value of millions – there were gangs involved and possibly drugs too – and that the perlemoen were smuggled off to China, where they were viewed as a delicacy. What? I could not see it. To me, a perlemoen was not a living entity. It had no value. Like most South Africans, I had never tasted one.

  I remember thinking: Why the hell didn’t we just let the Chinese strip our shores of this stuff and be done with it? Then, with the perlemoen gone, the gangsters would all have to get day jobs and the smugglers would go away. Then I found out a little more about this ‘piece of snot in a crash helmet’ and this is how I think it all goes …

  We have massive spreads of kelp forests off our southern shores. Inside these waving, drifting masses of kelp live the Cape sea urchins – Parechinus angulosus – under the prickly spines of which shelter juvenile perlemoen. Many sea beings like to snack on a perlemoen, especially the rock lobster – kreef.

  The lobsters are also eating the sea urchins and so are stripping away the perlemoen nursery facilities. To make things worse, lobster numbers east of False Bay are increasing, migrating around the corner of the Cape in vast numbers for reasons no one can quite explain. At any rate, they are playing havoc in the perlemoen beds.

  Now, to make matters worse, there are many millions of people in China who love to serve perlemoen on special occasions such as weddings. They want our perlemoen so badly, they are willing to buy it for huge sums on the black market. The attack on the hapless perlemoen is two-pronged.

  So the smuggling gangs come from China and approach the local coastal communities, most of whom are living on the under side of the breadline. For them, the perlemoen has been the ‘food of last resort’ for centuries. The beds are plentiful and if there’s nothing else to eat, the boys just hop into the ocean with a chisel and pry them loose from the rocks. Each perlemoen is a meal on its own – and you can even use the shell for a rather pretty ashtray or candle-holder.

  Initially, it’s a cash business. The Chinese are paying with fresh bank notes out of the boots of their cars. You suddenly see wealth all over the village, in the form of new Mercedes-Benz models and extensions to the home and pretty things for the women to wear and, perhaps, a better brand of whisky for the man of the house.

  In the decades before the 1994 democratic elections in South Africa, only certain lucky individuals were granted permits to take out the perlemoen. But in the New South Africa the ‘formerly disadvantaged’ populations living along the coast firmly believe it’s their right to benefit from the sea and extract as much perlemoen as they want. For most of them, it’s also their only means of survival.

  Moving right along from the concept of a perlemoen-for-dollars business, the smugglers now begin to offer the local poachers drugs and guns for the perlemoen instead. This has a certain appeal, because both drugs and guns can be sold for exorbitant profits in the local community. And then a vicious cycle begins. You’ve now got gun-toting drug addicts patrolling the shores around the southern Cape, grabbing anything on the sea bed that resembles a perlemoen, drying the stuff at home in unsanitary conditions and getting a quarter of the price they normally would for a properly dried perlemoen. So more perlemoen are prised off the rocks to make up the shortfall. Cops are outgunned or bribed to join ‘the other side’, tourists are beaten out of the way on the beaches and objecting locals get death threats and gang graffiti on their high walls. And ordinary people living along the coast simply don’t have a chance to eat perlies any more.

  We drove through the town of Hawston, near Hermanus. It had, at that stage, not yet been ‘blessed’ by the attentions of property developers, who had created something of an overpriced look-alike condo strip mall along the road into Walker Bay. Another day in Paved Paradise. Not yet here in Hawston, because this was the place, they said, from where the fearless perlemoen gangs operated.

  Hawston had snow-white beaches, a lovely bay and wild horses in the water meadows. We had lunch at a new restaurant called Huraeb Gaes: smoorsnoek, vetkoek, oxtail, mussels in white wine and so on. We asked the manager, Judith van der Merwe, if she would prepare some perlemoen for us.

  “It’s not the legal season for perlemoen,” the genial woman replied. “I know lots of poachers who are taking them out all the time, and I’d love it if they would do their civic duty and supply me, but they just laugh. They get far better prices elsewhere.”

  Just like the shark man, Brian McFarlane, in his youth, the kids around here dived for perlemoen. Some were look-outs, while others helped to carry the stuff from place to place. Very few folk in Hawston had perlemoen-free hands. I could understand it. Supply and demand. A pity about the drugs and guns, though.

  The most famous name in connection with perlemoen poaching was that of Ernie ‘Lastige’ Solomons. To many in Hawston, his name was synonymous with that of Robin Hood. He seemed to be creating a new legend every day.

  “Ernie has been banned from Cape Town,” someone in the restaurant told us. “But he likes the clubs over there. So he puts on a mini skirt and a wig and goes there anyway. He has also produced a ‘perlemoen rap’ CD called The Six.”

  We could not find Mr Solomons that day, but we did meet a famous former poacher called John ‘Klonkies’ Moses. The burly Moses ran a timber-cutting business as well as making money from his legal perlemoen quota under the new system. Under this arrangement, in a bid to reduce poaching, the coastline is zoned and chosen individuals are each assigned an area.

  “We know the perlemoen are being wiped out,” he said, “but the issues are complex. For 30 years, only 200 commercial divers were allowed to take out perlemoen and they kept the business to themselves. They were schoolmasters and lawyers and none of their money ever enriched the community.

  “I went with 12 other poachers to ask the government to change the situation. We were all poor. We told them: we don’t want to poach, but we will if we have to. They would not give us licences, so then the poaching really began. It became a war.”

  John Moses wasn’t talking about a price war or a couple of slaps in the face here. These guys were serious. The numbers were just too big to leave alone.

  “I warned everyone – including the media – not to portray us as people with a lot of guns and big amounts of money – but they did. And then the chancers started arriving here – lots of them.”

  We told him about our foray with the DEAT patrol boat from Kalk Bay. John laughed.

  “Let me tell you. When a patrol boat approached, we would SMS the divers. They had their cellphones down there in waterproof plastic bags. These boats are big and clumsy, you see them coming from far away. So what happens? The poachers throw their perlemoen overboard so there’s no proof. And the perlemoen die. It’s such a waste.”

  What about legal, on-shore perlemoen farms?

  “Now you
’re talking,” he replied, suddenly more animated than he’d been a second before. “We need perlemoen farms here in Hawston. Then we could maybe re-seed the area and make Hawston a Marine Conservation Area.”

  Like the cigarette baron who makes his millions from tobacco sales and devotes the rest of his life to the wellbeing of humanity, or the hunter who becomes the conservator, this poacher wanted to become a protector.

  “The authorities can’t stop us poaching,” he said darkly. “Only we can stop it …”

  Wilfred Chivell’s place lay just off Poacher’s Road on the way to Danger Point lighthouse. Wilfred – one of the foremost environmental champions along the Cape south coast and owner of Dyer Island Cruises – had offered to host us for a couple of nights as we picked away at the intricate matrix of Gans Bay life.

  After our visit to the lighthouse, we returned to find Wilfred’s friend Susan Visagie hard at work in the kitchen on a magic meal involving spiced chicken, cheese toppings, vegetables and something outrageous in caramel toffee. Susan, who was also helping Wilfred plan his new eco-centre in Klein Bay, began laying out a dish containing four thawing pilchards, which I thought was a bit over the top for supper.

  “No, that’s for the penguins,” she laughed, and took us outside to where two rather oily and depressed-looking African penguins lurked in a little enclosure. Nearby was a clutch of baby mountain tortoises and, in an igloo-shaped building, a series of swallows’ nests. Wilfred was a sucker for all kinds of strays, even writers bouncing up and down the coast.

  “One of my jobs around here is to keep a constant supply of wet clay available for the swallows,” said the inventive Susan.

  That night, around the dinner table, Wilfred told us what life had been like around here two years before.