In a spectacular underwater marine ballet, millions of sardines run in hundreds of shoals, swirling, dancing, and transforming in shape in the “Sardine Run” — an unexplained phenomenon that’s been dubbed “the greatest shoal on earth” — for which they make their way through the cold Atlantic waters off the Cape towards the sub-tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, with vast numbers of predators in hot pursuit. The numbers may be even more than that of East Africa’s great wildebeest migration. How many sardines do you think there are in a shoal that is fifteen kilometres long, three and a half kilometres wide and nearly forty meters deep?!

Their sheer numbers create a feeding frenzy along the coastline for sharks, dolphins, birds and even killer whales for a breath-taking event of the year’s greatest feast which is unique in both magnitude and complexity to the region. The sardines aren’t even safe from the skies as they’re driven towards the surface, where voracious seabirds — Cape gannet, cormorants, terns and gulls — arrive in flocks and plummet through the blue waters like fighter planes from as high as 90 feet (30 meters), leaving vapour-like trails behind as they devour their victims en masse. The birds can swim up to 20 meters down in pursuit of the sardines! It is tough near the bottom of the food chain!

This is one of creation’s most spectacular natural wonders on the planet and has been called “greatest shoal on Earth”. In these times of dwindling fish stocks, the shoals actually surprisingly represent a mere fraction of South Africa’s sardine fishery. This “leakage” of sardines is believed to be only 2% of the stock based off the southern Cape coast.

Categories: Animals