Controversy over sharks goes to court
July 31, 2003 Edition -1
Ingrid Oellermann
The killing of sharks, especially those at the internationally renowned dive site Protea Banks, off Shelly Beach on the South Coast, is the subject of a High Court action in Pietermaritzburg.
Sensational Charters, a Shelly Beach fishing charter company, has accused local dive operator Trevor Krull (of Aqua Planet Dive Shop) of distributing a defamatory pamphlet intended to harm its business.
Denise Milton, who runs Sensational Charters with her husband, Michael, described the pamphlet as emotive and containing innuendoes that her business was intent on killing sharks; did this senselessly; conducted continued killing and slaughter of sharks, targeted certain species of sharks for slaughtering and acted in a "cold, brutal, callous and immoral" manner.
The pamphlet, which is attached to court papers, shows a picture of Mr Milton and another man dressed in Sensational Charters T-shirts, with a dead shark believed to be a Zambezi shark, which was known to divers at Protea Banks reef and nicknamed "Kinky" because of a deformed tail.
Mrs Milton said her company had been in business for 17 years and had a good reputation. Clients on occasion did wish to fish for sharks and were accommodated, she said.
However, they had an option of tagging and releasing the sharks, which was "by far the preferred choice" of her company. In the past two years an average 10 shark trips a year were undertaken, she said.
Free, fair debate
Krull, a founder of the Joint Awareness Group for Shark Conservation, admitted distributing the pamphlet to divers, but said the killing of sharks lay within the field of "free and fair public debate".
"The imputation attributed to the applicant that it engages in such activities is true," he said.
Krull said Protea Banks was one of Southern Africa's foremost dive sites with unparalleled opportunities for diving with large pelagic sharks. Tourists flew to SA often for the aim of diving there, he said.
Some fishermen regarded sharks as vermin, justifying their slaughter and elimination, and others targeted them for sport to mount their jaws on display.
He alleged that Mrs Milton held views that were "antagonistic" to divers who condemned the senseless slaughter of sharks. Her picture appeared in a newspaper in 1996 with a dead Zambezi shark caught on Protea Banks and in a published letter she stated that fishermen were "fed up" with losing their catches to sharks and she did not believe a small area like Protea Banks should support "so many voracious large predators just to please the yuppie divers".
In March Michael Fraser, co-founder of the Joint Awareness Group for Shark Conservation, discovered and photographed shark carcasses which were allegedly sold to a local fishmonger by Sensational Charters. Subsequently, a picture showing Mr Milton with the dead Zambezi shark was given to him by Kobus Mentz, who said he had been asked to use the picture to promote Sensational Charters business.
The case was postponed to August 13.
