While Cape Town was an unforgettable experience, nothing could come close to the excitement of the Sardine Run.  Every year, cold currents push their way up the eastern coast of South Africa, bringing with them millions of sardines that typically reside in the southern waters of the country.  It’s unclear where the sardines end up, as they basically disappear once they pass Durban.  Nevertheless, for several weeks each year, shoals of sardines that can surpass twenty kilometers in length are found moving north along the Wild Coast.  Not surprisingly, the Indian Ocean empties its predators on this stretch of coastline, turning an annual migration into an absolute feeding frenzy.  To experience this unique event, I was hosted by the legendary Michael AW, founder of Ocean Geographic, and Sardine-Run guru Walter Bernardis, owner of African Watersports.

The thing about the Sardine Run is that it is incredibly inconsistent.  Some years it happens in late May, other years in June, and sometimes you won’t see a single sardine until July.  So you can understand why showing up for nine days and hoping for the best can turn into a bit of a crapshoot.  But, as you may have guessed by now, we were incredibly lucky.  In fact, Michael, a seasoned Sardine Run veteran, exclaimed that this was by far the best Run he had ever seen.

It’s important to understand just how incredible a natural event the Sardine Run really is.  There is nowhere else on the planet where anything even remotely similar occurs.  While millions of sardines are moving several hundred feet below the surface, similarly massive groups of common dolphins are arriving on the Wild Coast.  So-called superpods can be spotted moving in, thousands of dolphins strong and literally reaching as far as the eye can see.  As engineers of the famous bait balls, the dolphins are the workhorses of the Run.  They dive deep to reach the sardines, separating a ‘chunk’ and herding it to the surface.  These chunks can reach more than sixty feet in diameter; a solid, churning mass of sardines.  The dolphins periodically attack the bait ball from the sides and from below, taking advantage of the sardines’ natural schooling defense mechanism and forcing the ball to keep its shape.  When the bait ball is pinned against the surface, the gannets arrive.  Circling the ball from one hundred feet above, the gannets suddenly tuck their wings in and dive, making a colossal ‘thud’ as they hit the water.  As many as sixty gannets can hit the water per second, creating a machine-gun-like effect underwater and what Walter jokingly refers to as a white tornado above.  I had originally thought that a gannet’s dive was something done at random, but it’s the complete opposite; they seem to find their mark before they hit the water, snatching up a sardine seconds into their dive.  Even more incredible, if a gannet misses its mark, or isn’t satisfied with only a single sardine, it doesn’t have to get airborne again.  Watching these birds as they hunt underwater, flapping their wings almost as though they’re still flying, seemingly just as comfortable underwater as in the air, is one of the most unique and astounding things I’ve ever seen.

As if the dolphins and gannets aren’t enough, then come the sharks.  Diving down to the bottom of a bait ball for the first time can be a bit unnerving.  Dozens of silky, dusky and bronze whaler sharks can be found taking advantage of the dolphins’ hard work, skimming the sides of the bait ball or disappearing right into the thick of it.  As a casual observer of the sardine run, it’s best to stay outside of the bait ball, where a sudden flash of sardines provides warning that something bigger than you with lots of teeth and an open mouth is on its way out.  However, the sardines tend to have different plans.  They seem to recognize almost immediately that scuba divers, although loud and no doubt very strange, mean them no harm.  It’s not unusual to find yourself directly in the middle of a bait ball with no idea how you got there as the sardines take refuge around you.  This is not a good place to be.  While the sharks mean no harm to divers when there are thousands of sardines trapped right in front of them, it wouldn’t be hard for a shark to accidentally bump into a diver on its way through the ball.  In fact, last year an unlucky diver who had a shiny silver camera pushed up against his face in the middle of a bait ball had his nose bitten off; but accidents like this are rare.

So – dolphins are constantly attacking the bait ball from the sides and from below, gannets are hitting the water at sixty-birds-per-second, and sharks are going into a frenzy down below, leaping out of the water after particularly vigorous assaults.  Just when it seems like it could not possibly get any more exciting, a Bryde’s whale (pronounced Broodah’s) lunges from below, swallowing half the ball with an open mouth that could take on a school bus without any trouble.  With visibility reaching thirty feet only on the best of days, the only warning that a Bryde’s whale is emerging from the murky depths is a flash of sardines, easily mistaken for the usual shark or dolphin.  It quickly becomes apparent that this is neither a shark nor a dolphin as my peripheral vision is filled with a blue mass.  Each time a Bryde’s whale lunges through the sardine ball, as close as six inches from me, I tend to have two thoughts in quick succession.  The first is ‘how lucky am I that I wasn’t just swallowed, and how many times will my luck hold?’  The second is ‘oh shit’ as I look down to see its tail – as wide as a car is long – beating with a ferocity I’ve never seen before and with 90,000 pounds of muscle fueling each stroke.  Nevertheless, the Bryde’s whales always seem to slip by without inflicting so much as a bruise.  Hanging to the side of a bait ball sixty feet in diameter, watching dolphins scream through the sardines, sharks come flying towards me with open mouths, and 50-foot whales lunging just inches away from me so often it’s impossible to tell how many are actually here, I feel like I have truly experienced everything the Sardine Run has to offer.

But why am I here?  What is it about this experience that is educational and not simply exciting or entertaining?  How will the Sardine Run help me achieve my future goals of protecting the world’s oceans and how will the Sardine Run help change the way people live, help fix their bad habits that are destroying our natural places?  I’m here for the same reason that Michael is here, taking photos for the pages of Ocean Geographic, which will hopefully reach the hands of a businessman in Beijing, a farmer in Lima, or a CPA in Arkansas.  We’re here to capture a natural event so incredible that it’s impossible to ignore, an event so impressive that even those with no interest in the ocean will stop and say ‘Wow.’  We’re here to show the unadulterated glory of one of nature’s most extraordinary events to someone who would otherwise never know it even existed.  And now that they know it exists, they’re one step closer to caring that it’s still here tomorrow.