“Every year, in June and July, one of the most spectacular killing sprees in nature occurs along the west coast of South Africa… the annual ‘Sardine Run’. Some have described it as ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’. As the colder current brings in billions of sardines, the predators gather for the feast. Gannets, dolphin, sharks, and whales follow the migration, and feast like there is no tomorrow!”
[https://blog.mares.com/sardine-run-greatest-show-on-earth-8472.html]
Stop Press. Louttit Bay, Lorne: Monday, 20th October 2020: “Killing Day.”
Two days earlier, on the Saturday, I stood with the Jones’s [my ‘local bubble’ friends] on their deck over-looking the North Lorne Rocks and Fat Ladies beach [a local epithet!] as the gannets arrived.
Gannets… there were gannets everywhere: gannets, by the uncountable hundreds: glorious, Bex-and-a-lie-down gannets: gannets plunging to spear the water, bob back up to the surface, then while nursing what must be a crushing headache, neck-stretching a silver-flash of fish down their gannet gullet, before soaring back to a hundred and fifty feet. There, a quick circle, then another neck-jarring plunge. Over and over. It was a spectacular sight.
While I have often watched them in more isolated, individual moments – perhaps a few birds at a time – around the coast-line, on this day it was orchestrated, choreographed mayhem. Turning to the mesmerised Jones’s, I predicted – with rather more hope than expectation – “the dolphin will be here tomorrow”.
I was wrong. They didn’t come ‘tomorrow’. They came the day after tomorrow … on ‘übermorgen’ – the over-morrow. And, come they did, pod after pod, the waters of our except-for-easterly-placid bay churning above and around the feeding.
While Attenborough buffs will be familiar with some of his amazing underwater footage at the sardine runs of the South African coastline [one quite superb YouTube clip of this marine phenomenon can be seen at www.youtube.com, and although the Lorne event on 20/10/20 was clearly dramatically smaller in scale, observing the bombardment of the hapless pilchard schools from above, and watching the dolphin churn them into a frenzied ball beneath opened a rare window on the beautiful cruelty of nature.
Back on the same deck, powerful ‘occulars’ at hand, the sun out, the sea calm – except for disturbed surface where 8-10 corralled bait-balls stretching from Cathedral to Point Grey were under frenzied attack – we were treated to a relatively rare sight along our coast: coordinated, sanctioned, allowable, acceptable mass murder!
A pang of pity for the poor pilchards pricked my psyche – then passed. They were providing food for two awesome creatures of the sea: gannets and dolphin. I wondered if our friendly local, Sammy the seal, was out there somewhere, chancing his luck.
But, like the late-night Demtel ads of yore, there’s more! Farther out, two humpbacks were happily blowing bubbles like fun-park spruikers, confusing the baitfish and rounding them up into bite-sized gulps with the dimensions of a Toyota Landcruiser. Bubble… gulp! Bubble… gulp!
In the 50s and 60s, it was nothing to see pods of between 100 and 200 dolphin stretching across the near horizon. Huge dolphin pods formed part of Lorne’s ocean-normal vista. Hour upon hour of my contemplative youth was spent marvelling as dolphin after dolphin arched the surface. They seemed so happy. They seemed the epitome of freedom. And… the couta that attracted them had also always just ‘been there‘ – day after day, year after year – the backbone of the Lorne fishing industry.
Lorne was then the busiest couta port in Australia. More than 30 couta boats would be lowered every morning before dawn and would return by lunchtime – a trail of squawking, narky, squabbling seagulls crowding their wake, competing for the gut-slip of scraps thrown overboard from the laden boats.
Then, all of a sudden, the couta disappeared. No-one really knows why – at least no-one I know… or can find. Theories abound: a change in water temperature?… a couta-disease? – certainly many of the couta caught in those ‘final dwindling days’ were quite suddenly worm-infested… or perhaps it was just that their food source ‘moved on’.
But, as the couta declined, so did the day-by-day sightings of dolphin pods. Dolphin dwindled in the bay. They became a rare treat – at least from the shore – though local boatmen still reported occasional sightings further out. The bay fell silent – a smooth, swell-banded expanse, sans dolphin.
Imagine, then, the joy to see their return – perhaps a joy magnified by the stultifying, contracting focus of Covid-19 – joy bursting from a flurry of activity in our sea.
Killing Day! Despite its brutality, ‘KD’ came as a welcome reminder that all is not lost, nature is still there, the world is still magnificent, and our environment still beckons us. Indeed, ‘KD’ – to me – served as a much-needed reminder that, if we remain careless, all could be lost, nature is brittle, the world is fragile, and our environment needs us.
But – back to the present. While dolphin are undoubtedly man’s best friend in the sea, I cannot turn away from the extraordinary gannets that we watched that Monday in October. To watch them plunge… over, and over, and over again… necks taut, wings arrowed back like a swing-wing fighter jet, their trajectory tightly computed to enter the water at just the right angle, just the right speed, just the right chassis-contoured configuration… evokes awe.
Why do they not self-destruct, on every hit? Do they have a mind-bending headache by the end of their day as they wobble in flight back to their cliff top perches at Julia Percy Island or the Portland Rocks? While we may never really know the right answers, one thing is inescapable. The sight of our local rendition of the great sardine run of the South African coast is a sight second to none.
So, next time you see a flock of gannet ‘working the water’… keep watch. Their dolphin friends are likely not too far away. And, as for Louttit Bay?… you never cease to thrill, please, and surprise… so, thank you.
John Agar
