Image source: http://www.melindawebster.com/hawaii1/DSC_0010.jpg
Although the tiger shark may be considered sacred in Hawaii, elsewhere in the world it is viewed with a certain fear. In the last decade, attacks on divers have increased in their abundance and therefore shark conservation has become increasingly important as a means of understanding the short and long-term movement patterns of these graceful mammals.
Travellers who book themselves on a shark conservation holiday will find that they have to do a fair amount of diving on their travels and this is often side-by-side the elusive creature. The thought of swimming next to sharks may send shivers down your spine, but in actual fact you have little to worry about. Sharks very rarely attack humans and, on a shark conservation trip, you are more likely to see a shark feasting on turtles, fish, seals and even birds.
Birds might seem an unlikely food source, particularly as they never venture into the sharks lair under the sea. However, tiger sharks have no qualms about coming up to the surface in order to find their prey. During the summer season in Hawaii, the sharks are often seen precariously close to the shoreline in the hunt for albatross chicks in the shallow waters learning to fly. For the adult albatross this is a strange time as, although the chicks have to be on land until they can learn to fly, the parents are fully-fledged seabirds that hunt a long distance away from the land. In order to combat this problem, albatrosses can cover over one thousand kilometres in a single trip to find food for their offspring.
An albatross without offspring lives primarily at sea and therefore the time that an albatross learns to fly signifies the young fledglings approach into adulthood. Luckily the tiger shark is on hand to speed up proceedings. Every year as if on cue, the tiger sharks appear on the French Frigate Shoals of the Hawaiian Islands at the time when the albatross chicks are starting to take their first flight. The chicks take off from the shoreline and attempt to reach an adjacent sandbank, separated from the main island by sea. The chicks that aren't yet adept at flight will have to plonk themselves down in the water, where hungry tiger sharks wait in earnest. With a tiger shark snapping away at their tail feathers many of the albatross young quickly learn the art of flying; those that don't quickly become dinner, with the tiger sharks consuming around 10% of the albatross population in the Hawaiian Islands.
With the Eastern Cape sadly devoid of albatrosses the only way that you are guaranteed to get up close and personal to a tiger shark is on a shark conservation holiday. Getting up close and personal to a fully grown albatross is slightly harder as the birds can spend months flying at a time without touching the ocean. But with the memory of hundreds of hungry tiger sharks snapping away at their ankles, who can blame them?
