Great White Sharks Have Disappeared From Off The Coast Of South Africa

The warm waters off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa was once a home for the great white sharks. Previously, great whites have been spotted swimming around and chowing down on seals at Seal Island. Now, all of a sudden they have vanished completely out of sight.

Over the past 18 months, the City of Cape Town and the local Shark Spotter program have officially reported the “complete disappearance” of great white sharks from the 28-kilometer-wide (18-mile) basin, False Bay according to a statement given to IFLScience.

From 2010 to 2016, researchers recorded 205 great white shark sightings per year around False Bay, which lies on the southwest corner of South Africa near the city of Cape Town. By 2018, those numbers dropped all the way down to 50 per year. Unfortunately this year, there hasn’t been a single sighting confirmed yet.

: Wikimedia Commons

Cape Town’s municipality said:

Further supporting evidence of the absence of these large apex predators is the lack of any feeding or bite marks on whale carcasses the city has removed from False Bay this year. We do not know how their absence from False Bay would affect the ecosystem, neither do we know the causes for their disappearance.

As apex predators, they play an important role in the ecosystem by controlling prey density and restricting smaller predators. This raises concerns about the potential knock on effect that it could have on the area’s ecosystem.

Along with concerns for the great whites, the species also supports the country’s shark-diving industry and are a major pull for the local tourist economy. Cape Town’s travel website mentions that shark cage diving is “one of the most popular activities among visitors to Cape Town.”

Credit: Scuba Shack Diving Cape Town

There has been no explanation for the apparent disappearance of these sharks, but there’s plenty of speculation that orcas, which are the only natural predator of the great white, could be the reason. This assumption makes sense because orcas, also known as killer whales, are one of the few animals that can immediately move a great white out of its hunting grounds. In fact, the liver of a shark is a delicacy to the orcas. Which is probably why sharks won’t even return to those areas for nearly a year, even if the orcas don’t stay that long.

Credit: Whale Watch Cabo

Other speculations include over-fishing of smaller species of sharks that are a cornerstone of the great whites’ diet and illegally hooking and killing young great whites. Alternatively, the disappearance of great whites in the area could be a symptom of climate change and environmental shifts. “There could be some shift in the environment happening. We’re just not sure, and with us being on the cusp of possible large climate-related shifts, few scientists are prepared to say anything conclusive just yet,” said Meaghen McCord, founding director of the South African Shark Conservancy.

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