Depth charges: in the deep waters of the Ring of Peril, tense battles pitch the power of the sharks against the stealth of the seals

摘要

Slowly the great fish turns. With long, gracious sweeps of its crescentshaped tail, the huge spindle-like body moves effortlessly towards the sound that has attracted it. Twenty metres below the surface, the shark begins to angle itself upward with ever-increasing thrusts of its huge tail. The small Cape fur seal, one of this year's young, porpoises along on the surface, as if unaware of the rapidly approaching danger. When the huge shark is a body length away from the seal, it goes for the kill. Its eyes roll back and the lower jaw starts to open. But instinct has given the young seal a dread of the approaching shape more than any other, and in a splitsecond, it reacts with a sudden move to the left. Instead of forceful contact, there is only a glancing strike as the young seal bounces off the side of the shark's cayemous jaw. Both little seal and super predator cartwheel two metres up into the air in a blur of motion and cascading water.