Enrico's team:
during our last tracking session, Zulu wandered around Seal Island in the early morning hours and once the sun was out, she rested in the waves just several meters offshore in Hartenbos. We had visual contact on Zulu for quite some time and everyone was ecstatic when she did a swim by right beneath our boat.
Within 20 minutes, a shark breached on a cormorant but missed it. Jonathon was skippering the boat shortly after when he noticed, dead ahead, another lone cormorant hanging out in the waves. Literally at that moment, we kid you not, our shark Zulu, breached entirely out of the water, at least 3 meters, grabbing the bird in her mouth. As she plummeted back towards the sea in what felt like slow motion, the bird escaped the death trap of her jaws and continued her swim without further concern for the hungry white shark lurking below. Only an hour afterwards, Zulu breached again, but on thin air…maybe another shark made her jump out?
As Zulu made her way to Hartenbos in the evening, a larger shark breached twice in a row about 100 meters in the dark distance. Zulu swam back to Seal Island for the remainder of the night and stalked the many seals leaving and returning to seal island. Everything was pitch black and the clouds covered the once full moon directly overhead. The only thing we could see was the bioluminescent plankton that lit up in the wakes of speeding seals just beneath the surface. As Zulu scouted the area, the seals scanned beneath the surface and used our boat as a defence. As the night rolled on, we rolled into harbour and wrapped up what we all feel was an exhilarating three days of tracking.
Our last tracking session will be engrained in our brains for the rest of time.
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