Shark campaigner goes nude in bid to ban drumlines

A conservation campaigner put her life on the line to swim naked with sharks off the South Coast to raise public awareness and lobby against the use of drumlines and shark nets in South Africa.

Lesley Rochat of Cape Town, a tireless campaigner to save sharks and the ocean, has previously worked with Walter Bernardis of African Watersports in Umkomaas on a ‘Catches Anything, Kills Everything’ campaign, where she also stripped off to be photographed caught in a net.

Walter was the creative director of this new campaign ‘Get Hooked on Conservation, Ban Drumlines’, where Lesley was filmed swimming with sharks in her birthday suit to prove they aren’t man-eaters. She lay lifeless on a huge metal hook with sharks swimming around her to produce a 43-second video as well as still photographs for a poster.

“I guess the ‘Get Hooked on Conservation, Ban Drumlines’ campaign is our most extreme,” said Lesley. “Not that I haven’t already stripped naked for sharks, but this shoot was way more challenging because of the open ocean conditions, plus being naked, having to pose dead, hanging from a large hook while holding my breath and hoping the 30-plus sharks were in place.

But we felt extreme times require extreme measures,” said Lesley, referring to the international outcry by conservationist and scientists against the culling of sharks in Western Australia using drumlines.

“We decided to turn the spotlight back home. Shark culling is not new in South Africa, the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board has been using shark nets and drumlines for decades. Up to 600 sharks plus hundreds of other marine life, including dolphins and whales are caught by these barbaric killing devices every year. People from all over the world come to see our sharks and the loss of large sharks such as the tiger is having severly negative impacts on the shark eco-tourism business in KwaZulu-Natal.

This senseless slaughter of our marine life is perpetuated by public fear, a public who know no better. Through the campaign we hope to raise public awareness and lobby against the use of drumlines and shark nets in South Africa and Australia.”

Walter, who came up with the concept of the campaign, also manufactured the large metal hook to suspend Lesley on. “I thought instead of having a shark on the hook, it would make more of an impact to have something more beautiful such as Lesley on it. That way it would draw more attention to the poster and the message we are trying to get across.”

Visit www.lesleyrochat.com to see more.