Not a single shark has been spotted in the bay in more than a week.
Gansbaai marine biologist for the Dyer Island Conservation Trust, Alison Towner, said the absence of sharks could be attributed to:
"We have seen a consistently warm period but as soon as the strong south-easterly winds came in, the temperatures dropped by 10 degrees," said Towner.
She said sharks were sensitive to water temperature and that they might still be around further offshore.
But with 80,000 tourists a year coming to South Africa to dive with the apex predators, their absence is not going unnoticed.
"People aren't taking people out and they have signs on their boats saying, 'no diving, no sharks'," said Towner.
Brenda du Toit of Marine Dynamics Shark Tours in Gansbaai said there had been periods when sharks were scarce but there had never been a time when not a single shark was seen for such an extended period of time.
But it is not the first time the sharks have been scarce.
Chris Fallows, a shark cage diving operator from Simon's Town with 25 years' experience with great whites, said divers had a very "weird" season last year.
"We had a period of 57 days of seeing no sharks. The last time we experienced it was when there was a research project. when a lot of sharks were hooked. The other sharks disappeared as a survival mechanism," he said.
"They are most certainly caught as by-catch off our coastline. There is a legal shark long-line fishery where six boats go out and kill over 1000 sharks per boat per trip," said Fallows.
He said there was also illegal shark fishing along the coastline.
"Sharks have washed up in Gansbaai without heads or fins. The fins and jaws are taken during shark fishing. In Gansbaai a significant number of sharks carry hooks in their mouths. It's very hard to know exactly who is doing it but most of the shark finning happens in the Far East and is consumed traditionally," said Fallows.
Source: The Times
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