Great White Shark Makes Her Presence Felt

3.5m Great White Shark called Fergie knows she is one of the largest sharks in the bay and has the confidence to back it.

Mossel Bay is a fascinating place, home to residential juvenile and sub adult Great White Sharks as well a host of other marine life. Seal Island, Mossel Bay is situated only 800m from a busy tourist beach, where humans and sharks coexist in close proximity without any conflict. With a teaming food supply the sharks have no interest in humans, the high energy content from a blubbery seal pup is a lot more appetising. 

This video was taken at Seal Island in Mossel Bay a harbour town on the Garden Route in South Africa’s Western Cape Province. You can see other similar behaviour in some of the other clips on the channel.

In the video you see the 3.5m female Great White (nicknamed Fergie for her "Fergalicious" confidence and personality) approach the bait from below. Note that the clip has been slowed down and that the shark is moving through the water extremely quickly. You then see the shark cruise under the bait turning on her side to swim down the boat whilst looking up through the surface of the water. As the shark approaches the camera is lifted above the surface as to not hit the shark, but the shiny electrical object hovering just above the surface is too intriguing not to investigate. The shark takes a semi lunge out of the water with her mouth open to try and get the camera before sinking back down. 

When sharks ranging from 3m - 4.5m move into the island the atmosphere changes. Whereas the smaller sharks can be extremely cautious and nervous around the boat the bigger sharks exude confidence. They still display investigative behaviour to make sure they are not in any danger but they are aware of their size and know they don't have as much to fear. The bigger sharks quite often come in closer and spend longer investigating foreign objects as apposed to avoiding them and only observing from a distance. Being in their teenage years they are also usually proficient hunters which is displayed frequently on the bait. The sharks drop down deep before rushing up vertically breaching through the surface before the bait is gone.