Every year tens of millions of sardines run the gauntlet as they migrate along the South African coast. This event attracts thousands of predators to feed on the sardines including sharks, dolphins, sea birds, bonitos and the occasional bryde's whale. I was lucky enough to see them all!
Predators chase the running sardines to the surface. The sardines form a bait ball as a defensive mechanism, but the predators are skilled hunters and this doesn't really work. They get picked off one-by-one in a brutal exhibition of nature's indifference to their existence.
I was also lucky enough to swim with some migrating humpback whales, who often accompanied the dolphins we dropped in on, and had a surreal encounter with a bryde's whale who decided to hit a bait ball I was on.
