Sorry to necropost, but I’ve been thinking about this documentary lately and came upon this thread. It doesn’t look as though any South Africans have cleared things up, so let’s see. First, the documentary seems to have been filmed in Simonstown near Boulder’s Beach. That is a part of Table Mountain National Park–the area where we have a guarded colony of endangered penguins, but there’s more to it that I’ll return to in a bit. First, I wanted to talk about the octopus not having any human predators in that area. That is very much untrue. The area is so rife with poaching that ecologists relocate octopuses if they come into a rock pool that’s too exposed to people. It is crucial that octopuses stay afraid of humans.
Back to the issue of national park territory. In South Africa, it’s not legal to approach wild animals, national park or no, especially in the ocean. If a wild animal approaches you, you are allowed to stay put, but not close the space between you. You DEFINITELY aren’t allowed to stalk and cuddle the wildlife. Even outside of national park terrain, we take our ecology very seriously. It’s a way of life for us, and the ethics are more than clear for all of us. You never, ever insert yourself into the life of a wild animal. We’re one of the only countries (if not the only country) with a dedicated eco court because poaching is such a massive problem here, on land and in the sea.
As a South African, I can tell you that most locals to the deep south (as I am and as the documentarian is) know perfectly well that we behave as though ethics are law. We have a bustling tourism industry, and we have to take every measure available to us to keep our animals undisturbed. Tourism is very stressful for our wild animals.
Two years ago, a few friends and I accidentally happened upon a rockpool full of octopus right on a tourist hotspot. Since poachers would have annihilated the lot of them, residents guarded those octopus for days until the shark spotters could decide what to do with them–they routinely move them to quieter pools if absolutely necessary to save their lives. We have national park staff on these beaches all the time. They observe to make sure fishermen return sharks to the water safely with minimal injury. There is a strong presence of parks workers throughout the area.
Every year, we have a couple of elephant seals here to molt. National Parks workers demarcate the area and make sure the seals leave safely with minimal invasion. Their beaches become largely unusable because they are given a very wide barrier. One such elephant seal recently got curious and headed into the suburb. That suburb was definitely not a national park, but the seal caused a traffic jam. Workers refused to clear the traffic jam because their priority was to move the seal as calmly as possible. It’s our culture, and it’s ingrained. Our municipalities grapple with our wild animals all the time. They have to because we have quite a few wild animals along a tourist route near national park land. What I’m trying to say is the boundaries between ethics and laws are very fuzzy here. Ethics SHOULD be treated as law when it comes to our natural heritage. We take it that seriously. .
If this documentary is unethical in any country at all, it would be South Africa.
