Natal
Sharks Board
13th September, 1999
While in Umhlanga Rocks, we were guests of the Natal Sharks Board on one of their whale watching tours.
The Natal Sharks Board (NSB) is a government body in charge of promoting safe bathing through use of shark protection nets along the coastline. They have also manufactured the electrical shark repellent for diving use called 'The Pod'. Both the nets and The Pod provide solid ammunition for the various local individuals who are pro-shark conservation. Nowadays, the sharks caught in the nets are few and far between. Whether this is due to the intelligence of the sharks keeping their distance or the simple fact that there are very few sharks left around this coast is open to discussion. For the purposes of this website, we are keeping our opinions to ourselves. The NSB endeavour to pull the nets out of the water in time for the natural migration of Sardines known as The Sardine Run which occurs Jun to August. If the nets remained in place, hundred's of tons of sardines along with their predators of dolphins, birds, gamefish, whales and sharks would die.
Tours
The NSB,
located 20km north of Durban in Umhlanga Rocks, offers a variety of tours
including a live dissection of a shark, a fascinating audio visual presentation
on sharks designed to educate as well as entertain, displays of lifelike
replicas of sharks, fish and rays.
The boat trips on offer are for whale watching and an early boat trip
out with the meshing crews of the NSB where you can see how the staff
service the nets.
Whale Watching
I (Charlie) have been on a few whale watching boats around the globe and invariably one boat is accompanied by about 20 others charging after and cornering the whale as soon as one is sighted. I was pleased to note that in Natal, strict controls are placed on these trips and only 2 out of 4 permits have so far been allocated. Great news for the whales.Our Whale Watching boat was professionally skippered by Rod Haestier, a reknowned marine photographer (look out for the postcards if you're in SA - beautiful shots) and accompanied by Dr Vic Peddemors, NSB's Chief Scientist so we had a superb day of education on dolphins, seabirds and fish life of the Natal waters.....Mind you, although we saw a couple of huge pods of bottlenose dolphins close to the boat, we didn't see any whales! See July 2000 update for Whale Watching around Protea Banks for pictures of Breaching Whales and more info.