According to the International Shark Attack File, one human was killed by a shark in 2007 and according to fishing studies, humans killed an estimated 38 million sharks – seems a little unfair. When are the sharks going to make a movie about us? They could call it Gluttons I, II and III and the slogan can read "Give them a planet and they'll F*&K it up"
Its sad to see how misconception is causing the demise of yet another creature on this earth. This past December I took some tourists to see how the locals pull crayfish on the Hermanus New Harbour wall. This is a very popular activity with quite a few participants queuing at the gates before sunrise to secure the best spots. When the gates are finally opened, it’s like the start of the Amazing Race, with young and old scrambling and pushing to get to the few “special” spots available. Sometimes things get out hand and verbal abuse has even become physical abuse and all for those “special” spots. What is a “special” spot – one where your net doesn’t snag on the way up or down and where the crayfish climb onto your net like they catching a bus at a terminal.
Every now and then someone would pull up a net and get a little more than what they bargained for. As is the case with crayfish, pyjama sharks also find it hard to resist the interesting concoctions people stuff into the bait bags and occasionally this weakness causes them to get pulled up in the crayfish nets. On this particular day, every shark I saw pulled up, got a knife point in the brain and was tossed back in to the water. In the 30 minutes I walked along the wall, I witnessed the demise of three sharks. This is common practice all around the world, on a daily basis and somehow I don't think these figures are added to the statistics.
When confronted about this brutal practice, the fishermen insist that not only do the sharks eat all their bait but the sharks are to blame for the decline of the fish in the area. Now I understand that these people find it rather tedious to have to replace their bait every now and then, but does this justify the shark’s death? At least the guys I saw threw the bodies back into the sea so something else could eat off it, but it’s not natural and definitely not healthy practice. Blaming the poor sharks for lower fishing stocks seems a little short sited as how many fish do sharks eat and how many fish do we catch for our consumption? How many humans need to eat??
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