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00:00In South Africa, the release of the documentary, The Last Shark, has reopened the debate on
00:06a very worrying phenomenon.
00:09Despite all this abundance, everything started changing when the great white sharks began
00:16disappearing.
00:17The documentary was filmed in Gansbaai, the coastal town nicknamed the White Shark Capital,
00:23is facing an unprecedented crisis.
00:25The film's narrator, who runs a company specialising in shark-edge diving, is rightly concerned.
00:32I think the last time we saw a big shark was back in 2021, so it's very concerning.
00:38The sharks that we're seeing now are all juvenile sharks.
00:40Unfortunately our vessel hasn't seen a white shark this year, which is the first time since
00:47the company started in 1997 that we have not seen a white shark over winter.
00:52Tourists continue to go out to sea.
00:55They come across the bronze whaler shark.
00:57Young white sharks have only been spotted four times since the beginning of the year.
01:01Ten years ago, several hundred adults lived off the coast.
01:05For this scientist, overfishing is responsible for the great white's disappearance.
01:11We don't know who is catching what, so if overfishing is having such a great impact
01:18on removing species that they potentially would hunt for, it could be one of the reasons
01:23they no longer are returning to the area.
01:25The founder of the Nuisenberg Shark Museum has been documenting the decline of white
01:29sharks around the world for 15 years.
01:32Overfishing is a problem, but there are more reasons for the disappearance of great whites
01:37in South Africa.
01:38South Africa has been very active for a very long time in protecting the beaches with the
01:44nets, especially in the province of Natal.
01:46The place where most great whites are killed because they get entangled in these anti-shark
01:52nets and they don't survive.
01:55Great white sharks have been protected in South Africa since 1991, but this measure
02:01is not enough.