Situated on the sun-soaked coast of southern KwaZulu-Natal, the tiny diving town of Umkomaas has a reputation for being notoriously hard to leave. That was certainly the case for dive centre owner Bryan Vivier, who first came to the town as a tourist in 1985, yet ended up moving there permanently eight years later. For Bryan, the teeming reefs of nearby Aliwal Shoal made Umkomaas special - but it was incredible numbers of sharks living in the waters just offshore that made the area incomparable.

Bryan founded his own Umkomaas dive charter in 1993. He became one of the pioneers of the tiger shark diving industry for which Aliwal Shoal is now world-famous, and in doing so, forged a life-long passion for the species. Today, Bryan uses his dive centre, Aliwal Shoal Scuba - aliwalshoalscubadiving.com, as a platform for promoting shark conservation in the area. After three decades of diving on the Shoal, he has witnessed devastating changes in local tiger shark populations - changes that have seen the number of tiger sharks sighted on any given dive dwindle from double figures to just one or two.

The reasons behind the tiger sharks’ increasing scarcity are likely manifold. Like many shark species all over the world, Umkomaas’ shark populations are affected by overfishing and accidental by-catch. The sharks are seasonal visitors to the Shoal, with little known about their activities during the months of their absence - and as such, it is unclear what issues they may face during the course of their winter sojourn to other areas. During their time on the South Coast, however, the  species’ greatest threat are the shark nets deployed at local beaches.

These are not exclusion nets, designed to keep sharks from entering bathing areas. In fact, they do not even reach the sea floor. Instead, the nets’ express purpose is to catch and kill as many ‘dangerous’ shark species as possible - namely, the great white, the bull shark, and Aliwal Shoal Scuba’s much-loved tigers. Unfortunately, despite offering limited protection to human water users, the nets are brutally effective in their role as shark-killing devices. On average, they are responsible for the deaths of 700 sharks each year - 40% of which are caught on the side of the net closest to shore.

Unable to distinguish one species from the next, the nets are indiscriminate killers. In the last thirty years, they have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of non-lethal shark species, in addition to thousands of turtles, dolphins, and rays. Worst of all, the nets are deployed at several beaches within the Aliwal Shoal Marine Protected Area (MPA) - a no-take zone in which all three of the target shark species are supposed to enjoy complete protection. In an effort to help mitigate the damage being done, Aliwal Shoal Scuba does what it can to support local shark conservation.

Bryan and his team are firm believers that the only way to combat the nets is to change public perception of the area’s sharks. To this end, Aliwal Shoal Scuba began offering soft-cage dives in 2008, progressing to a steel cage in 2013. The purpose of this new initiative (a first for the Umkomaas dive industry, which previously offered cage-free encounters to qualified divers only) was to make it possible for non-divers and even non-swimmers to meet the Shoal’s sharks firsthand. In this way, people from all walks of life are able to see the tigers not as ruthless killers, but as majestic predators with a vital role to play in maintaining a healthy marine environment.

Aliwal Shoal Scuba was also one of the original supporters of the Paddle Out For Sharks event, an annual protest launched in 2012 after 13 tiger sharks were caught in MPA nets over the course of two days. Now in its fifth year, the Paddle Out sees members from all water user groups gather on backline to lay wreaths on the sea’s surface in remembrance of the sharks killed in the nets, and elsewhere around the world. It began as a one-town phenomenon, but sister events have now spread throughout South Africa and even as far afield as Australia - helping to raise awareness of the nets both locally and internationally.

In an effort to understand more about the tiger sharks’ behaviour, Aliwal Shoal Scuba also launched a tiger identification project in 2013. Through photographs of the animals’ distinctive stripe patterns, Bryan and his team are able to tell the tigers apart - and to establish which are recurring visitors from one season to the next. By encouraging those that dive with the centre to contribute their own photos to the online database, the project seeks to involve members of the global dive community in the fight to save Aliwal Shoal’s tiger sharks.