Can Sharks create baitballs on their own? - 11:03 am

07 Jun 2009

Yesterday was another quiet day at sea off Port St Johns, overcast, no wind with sea conditions being near perfect. After picking up some early morning dolphin feeding activity which we struggled to film because of poor visibility and fast moving action, we noticed a sudden boiling of activity close to our boat. It appeared to be a shark bait ball - there were no dolphins in the vicinity - a small shoal of red-eye sardine that had been balled to the surface by a group of attacking sharks, and who were in the process of being attacked from both below and above, by sharks and cape gannets. Sharks are not known for their co-operative feeding skills, so was this bait ball created by them or by something else. Earlier Barry had noticed a shoal of bonito’s or skip jacks while filming underwater - its possible that it was these same bonito’s that had done the work of the dolphin to create the bait ball in the first place, which the sharks had then taken advantage of?

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