‘All that was left of one diver was a pelvic bone’

Cape Town - Hundreds of poachers dive for abalone off Gansbaai which is also home to expert hunters – great white sharks.

The poachers dive twice or thrice a week, yet only seven of them have been attacked in the past 18 years, the Western Cape High Court was told.

Testifying in the abalone syndicate trial, Captain Danie Rautenbach said seven or eight poachers had been attacked by sharks since he started working in Gansbaai in 1998.

“It doesn’t happen often... about seven or eight times since I started,” said Rautenbach, who testified he had seen between 20 to 90 poachers diving at once.

“I once saw from a plane… about 40 of them (poachers) swimming in a line. I have seen situations where the shark comes at the diver, like in Jaws, bites him and takes him away. I have only found the pelvic bone of one of the guys.

“They’re out of the water for two weeks and then they go in again. The money is big and that’s the motivation. It’s known internationally that this is the territory of the biggest great white sharks in the world.

”I have a lot of respect for the guys. To go diving there at night? You have to have guts”, Rautenbach testified.

Poacher-turned-state witness Regard Brooderyk told how they hid from sharks.

“You swim into the bamboo (bull kelp) because the shark will get entangled if he swims into the bamboo”.

Weekend Argus