CYOH ended 2011 off with a bang at their annual awards function at Chingada's on Saturday night. A lekker turn-out saw the Mex possie turned into CYOH HQ for the evening. 

There were some awesome prizes for the overall CYOH Surf series winners - Nixon watches and Xcel suits for each deserved division winner. Dylan Lightfoot took out the coveted men's open title and got to stab ET in the back with the ceremonial winners sword.

The evening also saw the announcement of the grand final winner of the CYOH Millerslocal Video Challenge powered by RVCA. Jean du Toit got the nod from the judging panel for his awesome footage of Hummies going off it's mielie. Jason Hearn (Producer of the Africa Project), Alan van Gysen (Photo ed of the Zag) and Arno Lane (big cheese at RVCA) were the judges.

He scored himself R5000 RVCA rands, and in a moment of selflessness declared he'd be splitting his dosh with the other 3 finalists. Nice one Jean. He's one good-karma man for sure.

Big up's to RVCA who put up R9000 to sponno the event (R1000 monthly prizes and the R50000 grand prize) - it's pretty awesome to get a purely local event with such a big-ass prize. We got some awesome vid's - so thanks to all the guys who sacrificed surf time to get the shots from the beach....not to mention the hours in the edit bay.

It's definitely got some local guys to hone their video skills, so we hope to see more clips coming outta the bay in the near future. Remember - always send your video's through to the website - we'll pluk them up so everyone can check em out.

Major congrats to CYOH, who picked up the Club of the Year award from SA Surfing, which is a pretty freaking fine achievement. Well done to Jakes, Josh, Bruce and the guys for really putting time and effort in to creating such a killer vibe....and may the club continue to go from strength to strength. Big plans in the pipeline for next year, rumour has it...so keep your eyes peeled.

A stomping night was had by all, and pretty sure there were a few bleary eyes in the line-up on Sunday morning....

What you see at 1:39 will do your head in.....

I found my jaw dropping and my eye's widening when I watched this! Freaking insane. OJ is my hero!! Sure don't know anyone else with balls enough to paddle right over a bunch of massive tiger sharks on a surfboard and have em swim up and smell your flipping toes.

OJ's one of the Bomb surf mags team of regular contributors, like yours truly. She's a south coast surfer gal who's made it her mission to dispel the myths around sharks - and in this Nat Geo program she's putting her money RIGHT where her mouth is!

I'd hoped to include some of the findings from her program in the article I've just written on Great Whites for the Bomb (should be landing in your post boxes this week), but OJ was bound by confidentiality agreements so she wasn't allowed to talk to me about it until the Nat Geo episode aired...which was after my deadline. Drat.

Researching the article was quite an experience. Immersing yourself in all things Great White for the better part of 2 months really did my head in for a bit. I'd never given it a second thought to go surf Millers by myself, and now all of a sudden I was kakking off, cos all I could think about was sharks.

Which was really ironic....cos all the scientific articles were pretty consistent in saying that we most definitely aren't on the menu. Guess it was just having it at conscious level all the time cos I was reading about it was playing tricks on my mind.

I'm not going to let too much out the bag til you get your mags and read my article, but suffice to say when I started I was totally of the belief that shark cage diving was resulting in an increase in shark attacks. But when you start digging into the facts, not the emotions, things aren't quite what they seem. 

Sharks are by no means man-eating monsters like JAWS would have us believe. But then the media love getting their hands on anything like that and blowing it out of proportion - "If it bleeds, it leads" is the saying, meaning if it's gory you stick it on your front page as the lead story, and you sell more papers. Sound familiar!? Specially when there ain't a helluva lot else going on in our sleep lil dorp....

Knowledge is power as the saying goes. I'm sure this is true once that knowledge has had time to seep in and settle down and become less emotional. The outcome of all my research was coming to an understanding that we aren't on the menu, and getting bitten is all about being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being shit outta luck basically. 

The plan is just to try avoid those wrong place/wrong time scenario's....as they're the one's stacking the odds against you as far as becoming a statistic goes. We've all heard the oft-touted stats that you have more chance of dying in a car crash on the way to the beach than being bitten by a shark. True.

But personally I'd prefer neither option thanks!

Check out OJ's Nat Geo episode below - broken down below into short segments. Starts up with an overall intro - and then deals with the various theories behind what attracts sharks to us....colour, bling and sound.

Bet you a hundred bucks you'll kak yourself next time you get in the water! But don't worry.....the feeling goes away eventually. I'm back to normal now....that Jaws theme music has disappeared into the background again!

Shew, turns out fishermen are just as passionate about their sport as surfers! It all started with a comment I made on Facebook on a picture of a guy landing a shark at Pollock last week.

Happened to mention in the comment that there was a proposed fishing ban along the bays beaches so we maybe wouldn’t see too much of that in the future, as I did think it was a kak idea to be fishing for, and landing sharks right where people were swimming and surfing.

Well, turns out I was obviously one of the few people that knew about that proposed ban – cos next thing everyone was going ballistic.

Classic case of “Don’t shoot the messenger” ou’s! Peeps were going on about how they should just ban surfing then and whadawhadawhada. The fisherman jumped to the (incorrect) assumption that the surfers were behind the ban cos of the incident where the shark was brought up onto Pollock last week and that we informed the beach manager about it.

K, so let’s get the facts straight. Surfers have in no way, shape or form had ANYTHING to do with the proposed fishing ban. I found out about it months ago when I attended one of the beach forum meetings hosted by the beach manager, and the proposed Beachfront Aquatic Safety Zone (BASZ) plan was one of the items on the agenda. 

Included in the overall BASZ plan was mention of a proposed fishing ban from Fence to Rincon. I have no idea who originally proposed the ban and why it was proposed. I would assume it has to do with bather safety related to sharks, which is a pretty valid concern.

So the proposed fishing ban was on the drawing board LONG before last weeks incident at Pollock.

The BASZ plan still has to be finalised, and then will be made available for public comment and a public participation process, so the fishermen will have the opportunity to voice their objections.

Personally I don’t think chumming for sharks off the rock at Avo’s is a good idea if there’re people surfing or swimming nearby. If it’s crappy sea conditions, and no-one’s in the water nearby, then no problem.

Sharks have an acute sense of smell, and will most definitely pick up a bunch of shredded pillies being thrown into the water. As local shark researcher, Matt Dickens explained to me when I interviewed him for an article I’ve just written for the Bomb Surf mag on Great Whites...if they're just cruising about minding their own business, and pick up even the faintest trace of a smell in an otherwise benign environment, they'll head over for a look.

So it’s not a case of them going “Ah, I smell food, I’m gonna go chow”…..but rather, they’re just super quizzy creatures, and they’re now suddenly smelling something, so they’re just gonna head over and check it out.

The hiccup comes that if there’re swimmers or surfers in the area that they’re coming to check out, they might just check em out too! Again, these animals are inquisitive as hell, so if they spot something and they don’t know what it is, they might want to go over and check it out. Now if we see something that’s new to us, we can pick it up, turn it around, have a look. The shark doesn’t have hands, so for him to suss something out he has to use his mouth.

Which turns into quite bad luck if you’re what he wants to investigate – cos we aren’t so well equipped to deal with 3 rows of razor sharp teeth suddenly getting embedded into us! 9 times out of 10 they’ll let go once they’ve bit us….cos it was generally an investigative bite to start with – and they discover we don’t taste nice at all, so they spit us out.

Most deaths related to shark bites are from blood loss afterwards, not the shark actually trying to eat the victim. We are NOT on the menu, but if we are out there in the food chain, chances are we might get investigated.

And this is where the issue of chumming becomes a problem. If you’re drawing more sharks to an area because they’re picking up traces of smell, more sharks means a greater possibility of a shark human encounter. Basic stats.

Again, not cos they’re out to eat us, but they just wanna pick us up and see what we are – kinda like  a lil kid picking up a new toy!

So from that perspective I do think the beach manager has a point to want to ban fishing if it’s going to be responsible for bringing more sharks inshore close to where the bathing beaches are. It’s certainly not going to bring more sharks into the bay, all its doing is attracting those sharks that are already in the general vicinity to a particular area where there happens to be bathers.

We’d be ignorant to assume there aren’t sharks in the bay, there’re plenty – it’s speculated that Algoa Bay actually has the highest number of Juvenile Great Whites in South Africa (check out the interview I did with local shark expert Matt Dicken here). So they’re there, fishing or no fishing doesn’t change that. BUT, attracting them to an area where bathers are just doesn’t make sense, because of the possibility of increasing the chances of a human shark interaction. Don’t like the word “shark attack” as it assumes the sharks attacking us, mostly he isn’t, he’s just checking us out.

It’s a tough one, cos I don’t think all fishing should be banned near swimming beaches, just fishing for shark (and even then, not all sharks will bite us. Raggies are lazy-ass things that wouldn't bite you unless you stand on it by mistake, or he swims into you cos he's half asleep!) – but then how do you monitor who’s fishing for edibles vs inedibles, and raggies vs great whites? That’s the challenge the municipality faces, which is maybe why it’s opting for the overall ban, as it’s easier to monitor.

I have no idea what the outcome of all this is going to be, so guess we’ll have to wait and see….but certainly don't let the fishermen give you lip about the surfers being responsible for it.....now you can give em the facts.

This weekend saw the opening of the new Kings Court Market. Big Dave has opened PE's very first core skate store there, Skate Centre (OK, so Dave's a sucker for keeping it obvious!) They have a permanent mini-ramp built at the shop, all ready to go - just waiting on the graff artists to attack it with some spray cans....pending managements approval!

There's also the Element half pipe that'll be based in the car park there for the next 2 weeks, so pull in, pay your R20 and skate for the morning or the afternoon. All the bucks collected are going to the EP Childrens Home.

Dave and Element organised some skate clinics for the lighties from the Home - that saw nearly 70 kids get their first taste of skateboarding...and boy, where they STOKED! They were only meant to skate for an hour sesh, and 3 hours later they still couldn't pry them off the boards.

Big up to Element who even flew in 2 coaches to do the clinics for the kids, as well as donating some boards to the Home so the frothing lighties can skate themselves stukkend over the school holidays. Great to see the brands giving back to the community. Respect!

Thanks to Vangie, Chad, Dave and all the rest of the crew for ensuring the kids had a total jol.

Also thanks to Cape Town Fish Market who kindly provided meals for the kids. Go eat sushi there ou's! Support people who support your community!

Which means go buy your Christmas pressies at Dave's shop....nothing beats a new surfboard or Element skateboard!