Mania ray, escorted by diver and school a/remoras, swims through the waters 0/ Shark Bay. HE GREAT JAWS of the white shark slid ing station beside three buoyed sperm trapped in an immovable cage waiting for Talong the whale carcass, open wide, whales caught the day before. Flensers the shark to perform, knowing that only chomping, mouthing, trying to sink its were working on three more at the factory. a short moment remained to capture on teeth into the broad surface. Now the teeth When the ramp was cleared, these three film this savage eating machine. locked onto the tough hide, jaws pushed would soon be hauled away. The shark had The shark sensed that his banquet was way out, horribly distended. The five­ less than an hour to feast on the banquet; to be a brief one. He ran his jaws along the meter shark shook its head violently, tail we had the same amount of time to film his slippery hide pushing, biting, impatient to thrashing, pushing, wrenching, and a frenzied feeding. tear the thick blubber away and get at the twenty-five kilogram bite of blubber came My inexperience with cages was re­ red meat. The great hulk of the whale slow­ away. vealed when I hurriedly jumped overboard ly slid past me, as if brought back to life We took a close look at the huge bite, to film the shark. This one overbalanced, and in motion again. The white shark then maneuvered the shark cage into the almost tipping upside down, and shoving plodded behind, gave an angry chomp at water between our boat and the sperm my legs well beyond the bars: not a com­ the disappearing fluke, then he too glided whale carcass. I had never filmed sharks forting thought. Eventually I righted the away into the gloom. from a cage before, but I would not enter cage and slipped deep inside. By the time We later discovered that inside one of these waters without one. This white shark I recovered one whale was being towed the sperm whales was a monster squid Was hungry, he had a whole whale to eat, away, and the tender boat was already swallowed whole, still intact. The squid's but would surely prefer a smaller-sized coupling up the second one. In a few min­ body, together with its shorter tentacles, meal, one that his jaws could encompass utes the third whale would be hauled measured four and a half meters. The two more easily. away too. long tentacles were missing, but they would We were anchored off the Albany whal- n was extremely frustrating to be have made the animal an amazing thirteen MAY 1979 Text and Photographs by Ben Cropp 43 meters in length. We think of such great The stark outline of the Zuytdorp Cliffs cation of 550 whales, they only managed to creatures as mythical sea monsters. Here, stretched northward to disappear in the capture 87. As a result the International off Albany, they are very real. A second, gray dawn. In the half-light I could just Whaling Commission (IWC) banned the smaller squid measured eight meters long. distinguish the section of cliff where the hunting of humpbacks in the Southern H the bigger squid's tentacles were Dutch treasure ship Zuytdorp ran aground Hemisphere. stretched apart, the way we measure octo­ in 1712. Those few who survived soon per­ The battery of rusting boilers at Nor. puses, they would span an incredible ished on the inhospitable coast, leaving a wegian Bay is an ugly reminder of an ugly twenty-four meters. huge treasure of a quarter of a million sil­ business. Out on the reef lay the wreckage That night my colleague, Hugh Ed­ ver guilders in the pounding surf. The of one of their whale chasers, the Fin. Close wards, caught the whale-eating shark on treasure ship is protected by Australian by a tiny sand cay sparkled in the clear one of his four carefully set baits. It meas­ law, but the treacherous cliffs prove a water. The nesting terns swarmed by the ured five meters. The next morning, flash­ more formidable barrier. thousands to this Frazer Island as the Sun frozen, he loaded it onto a trailer and head­ While natural blowholes erupted along set. It was a beautiful living contrast to the ed for the Perth Royal Show where it the rocky cliffs in regular geysers, it was history of slaughter in the bay. would be on exhibit. the spurts of spray to seaward we con­ Even if the shark had not been caught stantly monitored. A pod of humpbacks T WAS LATE IN THE DAY when we left the on Hugh's oversized hook, it would most was always in view, relentlessly pushing I group of whales and made for the an. likely have been his last whale meal any­ northward. chorage behind Cape Inscription. In the way. Thankfully, the last whaling station By noon we ran along Dirk Hartog Is­ fading light we almost ran over another in Australia has finally closed down. Our land which fronts and protects the deep gentle giant. The white spots on a broad encounter with the hungry shark occurred indentation of Shark Bay. Off Cape In­ back and a ten-meter length easily dis. during the final days of whaling. Econom­ scription the whale pod changed course, tinguished a whale shark. Like the hump. ics and persistent pressure from conserva­ swung in an arc closer to the coast, and back, it was on a migration north and feed. tionists had finally reprieved the magnifi­ slowed down. With my binoculars, I picked ing on the same planktonic diet. cent leviathan, freeing it to roam the Aus­ out more spurts of spray ahead; another Opposite the southern tip of Dirk Har. tralian seas unmolested. group of whales was already off the cape. tog Island is Steep Point, the westernmost The sperm whales migrate north from I turned my boat Beva toward the swirl extremity of the Australian mainland. the Antarctic to the southwest corner of of disappearing flukes and tried to guess Huge Indian Ocean swells crash with un­ Australia near Albany. On the edge of the where the monsters would surface. With­ believable fury against the sheer cliffs of continental shelf they dive deep for the out warning a fourteen-meter shape sud­ this well-known landmark. On the tip of giant squid, and huge sucker marks around denly rose up from the sea, bringing its this point we found more than a dozen their heads testify to the tenacious struggle great hulk alongside us before collapsing rock cairns clustered together. They bore between two ocean giants. The sperm in the water with an enormous -splash. scrawled names on bottles, rock, and wood whales appear to briefly touch the south­ Cautiously we approached the whales . of the intrepid modern explorers who had west coast, then curve seaward in a mi­ again, not wanting another breach so close. crossed Australia from east to west. One gratory loop back to the Antarctic. We let them get used to the boat, moved had succeeded on foot, others on bikes or Pods of orcas migrate with the whales, gradually nearer, and after two hours they four-wheel drive vehicles. Another, a girl, and the white shark we had met in Albany finally accepted us. had traversed the desert by camel. was an ocean traveler too. We know for It was a magnificent sight. The levi­ We had come the long way round. Beva's sure that the white sharks, which follow athans glided upward, long flippers out­ log now read 10,000 nautical miles since the dead whales to shore, are not local spread and almost touching Beva, bodies we had left home on the eastern end of ones. Hugh Edwards noted that each visi­ as long as the boat. A burst of spray from Australia eighteen months ago. We added tor was a newcomer, a pelagic creature twin blowholes formed a rainbow over two our own rock cairn, with an inscribed list diverted to Albany by the wake of a towed of the whales, which were so near that I of Beva's crew. and irresistible meal. had a problem framing both animals in Though we failed to meet the whale The humpback whale also migrates my wide-angle lens. shark again, we did encounter many other north from the Antarctic in the early win­ As the whales angled across Beva's bow, migratory giants. Twin wing tips of manta ter, and swings close to the coast off we throttled back. A great tail rose up, rays sliced the surface off Cape Inscription, Geraldton, heading north to its mating and poised momentarily with the water cascad­ and the dorsal fins of sharks cruised along calving area off Shark Bay. Reprieved from ing off, then down it plunged into the the beach edge, occasionally threshing into the harpoon in 1964, the decimated hump­ ocean depths. a school of pilchards.These pilchards also backs have slowly increased and returned Whaling was one of Australia's oldest migrate along the coast, continually har· to their traditional migratory route to re­ industries. During the peak year of 1845 assed by pelagic fish and the sharks. Above, plenish their species. some 300 sailing ships harpooned the the booby gannets and pied cormorants While filming the whaling and white whales off the south coast. By the 1960s the rocketed relentlessly into the chopping sharks in Albany, I realized I was witness­ humpback was commercially extinct off turmoil of fish.