Hundreds of sharks filmed in bait fish feeding frenzy near Byron Bay

An abundance of baitfish has drawn in hundreds of sharks to feed in the shallows around Byron Bay, creating dramatic scenes at one of Australia’s most popular holiday destinations.The multi-day event was captured by many Byron locals, who shared footage of the sharks, including black tip whalers, dusky whalers and bull sharks, as they fed on the large school of fish over the weekend.Footage of a large shiver of sharks feasting on a bait ball at Byron’s Tallow beach while snorkellers swam nearby was shared widely on social media. In the video, the sharks could be seen herding the school of baitfish close to the rocky shore in a feeding frenzy.Jakob de Zwart, one Byron Bay photographer who filmed the spectacle, stumbled upon people looking and pointing at Tallow beach while on a walk at the Byron lighthouse. Luckily, his drone was in his nearby car.“Once the drone went up and I got a top-down look, it was just like ‘OK, this thing is next level big’. I was going higher and higher and higher just to figure out where this thing ended … and then I was looking at this thing going there’s without a doubt 100 sharks in here,” he said.“[The sharks] were so close. We’re talking knee-high water … and they were coming right in and flapping around the bait ball,” he said.A huge school of baitfish and sharks near Byron Bay Photograph: Jakob de ZwartAdam Smith, a professor at James Cook University and head of marine environmental organisation Reef Ecologic, said Australians were “very lucky” to have this natural phenomena in their back yards.“There’s very few other places in the world where, close to a small town or even a major city, you can see these amazing wild creatures so close and in numbers,” Smith told Guardian Australia.Daryl McPhee, associate professor of environmental science at Bond University, said the event was “certainly spectacular viewing for those present”.McPhee, who has seen this type of feeding up and down the coast over the past 40 years, called it “certainly not something that people are going to see every day”.Sharks follow baitfish Photograph: Saxon KentAlthough swimmers and snorkellers were filmed in the water near the sharks, both experts warned the water is not a safe place for humans when this natural phenomenon occurs.“It’s fantastic that people can see nature in all its rawness so close on our beaches and headlands, but then this also comes with challenges in terms of understanding what you’re seeing [and] respecting what you’re seeing,” Smith said.“Some people are probably pushing the envelope a bit too far and trying to swim and or snorkel with these sharks, and there are inherent risks with that in terms of people either being bitten … or potentially losing their life.”McPhee echoed the warning: “While most of the sharks there are small, they can still inflict a bite, and they’re certainly in feeding mode … people need to not be in the water and they certainly need to not be snorkelling, trying to get some up-close footage.”The bait fish started to disappear by Tuesday, with the sharks following suit. De Zwart visited Tallow beach and found it was “back to normal”.