PERSONAL REFLECTION: ‘We are here, Janine’ — my account of fatal Orient Beach shark attack

Janine Lochrenberg (65) often swam solo in the open ocean, especially off Orient Beach in KuGompo City. We spoke often about the risks of being taken by a shark or some kind of seizure when you are on your own. She would go, “Ja, that is how it goes”.

It was a risk she was prepared to take.

I have done some solo rock climbing and surfed big waves alone. And among our gorgeous community of open water swimmers, some of us feel God is with them and they swim in calm serenity.

Others, the atheists like myself, we swim with the shadow, the third eye, and we have to get into the saddle and settle over the distances of two kilometres, four, five or the longer treks such as eight kilometres off Orient and around Nahoon Reef to the beach. 

We are more than aware that great white sharks are believed to have migrated from the Western Cape to Chintsa Bay following allegations that the orca hunting pair, Port and Starboard, have decimated the shark population there.

So we will strap a shark pod to our ankles. It is a brick of a thing with a long electrified tail which pushes out a proper shock that is designed to scramble any incoming shark’s ampullae of Lorenzini, the array of sensory organs in its snout.

But it is a heavy beast, and it has shocked us inadvertently in all manner of sensitive places and once got tangled around a swimmer’s neck in the surf.

Yesterday was a glorious Tuesday. A light south-westerly wind grooming a clear blue sea. The water was a cool 15°C. Perfect for a swim – and great white sharks.

After hundreds, probably thousands, of swims off Orient Beach over seven or eight years for both Janine and me, and with my 12km Langebaan Express swim less than three weeks away, we opted for the lighter Sharkbanz 2, a rare-earth magnet strapped to the ankle like a fat watch.

Same story, this time a natural electromagnetic field.

And we swam. Janine disappears from view; she does her own thing, as per usual. She is not alone in solo swimming; we have a doctor and a senior academic who both go right out there with just goggles and cap.

This is our adventurous lifestyle. We are not nanny-culture societies. We live and swim for the experience.

A few minutes before 8.13am I was sitting at around 3.7km into my swim with my Langebaan event swim partner and dear friend, Barbara Briceland (71).

She and Janine are life partners and live in Nahoon. 

Our informal swim leader, Joy “Coach Roach”, slipped in to connect with Dr Mandy Uys, who had arrived a little later. We spotted them a bit further out at roughly 100 to 150m offshore and made our way there.

Suddenly there was shouting and waving from that little group. Something was wrong. We swam harder to get there.

Janine was lying flat on her back and as I got closer, I could see she was injured. There was an enormous wound on her upper right thigh, and later I saw a big gash on her right upper arm. I realised she had been mauled by a shark.

Joy and I got into supportive position. She was still alive and making small sounds.

Barbara and Mandy raced back to shore and Joy and I cradled our friend. Joy on her left side and myself right up against the wound.

That was what had to be done, and at one point Janine’s head fell back into the water, and so we had to keep our hands on the back of her neck to keep it out of the water.

We began a long, slow rescue paddle, kicking our feet and using our spare arm. It was a quiet, eerie experience, and you often wonder what you would say in this crisis moment.

In my case, it was just: “We are here, Janine.” Over and over.

A desperate rescue attempt

On the beach were three swimmers who had finished before us and were sunning themselves on the vintage cement amphitheatre seats.

Bronwyn de Sousa looked out and saw a large fin heading for a swimmer and then a commotion in the water. She exclaimed to her swim buddy, Jessica Broodryk, who is an advanced life support medic who jumped into her costume and ran to the shore together with Mark Roach, Joy’s son.

Mark is a Deaf SA Olympian swimmer with an A-frame physique.

How marvellous to see him charging into the surf because I was huffing and puffing, and it was with great relief that we handed Janine over to him. He placed her in the classic lifesaver rescue position and powered her to shore.

He carried her to the sand and laid her down where Jessica started CPR, and Barbara kept feeling for a pulse. I was trying to apply a tourniquet to the thigh wound.  It was hopeless and the best I could do was to compress the limbs with both hands.

By now, beach officials had mobilised and we carried her to the road near the lifesaver complex.

Medics arrived promptly and went to work. She was declared dead, but I already knew that, intuitively.

As Joy and I had started swimming, Janine’s head fell back, and she seemed to be staring at the sky. She was a very thin person and from the perspective of Mandy and Joy who got there first, it was quite clear that she had bled out a lot, from her leg wound especially.

Her colour changed before our eyes, and in the quietest of moments it felt to me that life was not draining from her body, but seemed to be leaving through her eyes.

Take this from whence it comes. I am an atheist and journalist, but this is how it felt.

I felt Janine left us as we were taking her to shore, but science and the authorities will have to confirm that.

A bond forged through many swims

Our friendship is not normal. Our crew has forged bonds through many swims in many places. They bring us joy, and fear and some suffering, but rarely have we ever said afterwards that we had a bad swim.

We have our bond, and now the bondsman has arrived to collect. We are devastated, we are in grief and mourning. We have gathered around our Barbs, and we hold her with love and care.

We do not hate sharks. All of us are environmentalists, and even have a fun name for our special passion. We are “oceanators”. We live to get into the surf in any conditions, except when ridiculous, and we live large.

We have surfed big waves, sailed, dived, and open water swimming is the most incredible way of keeping connection until you are a worn-out ‘ballie’. One of our leading women swimmers, Gail Wild, 70, was recently the first woman home in the Kromme River 14km swim.

We will learn more about shark behaviour, those vital seconds if you have them, to engage with these wild, dangerous, endangered, magnificent creatures; we will go back to those damn clunky shark pods; we will hold memorials and pay tribute.

We will campaign for the top office of the triple-story lifesaver’s complex at Orient Beach, now used as an office for officials to meet, to be returned to the lifesavers who can again be up high with binoculars spotting sharks with a gas horn by their side. 

At the moment, they live in a waterlogged ground floor with a windowless wall facing the ocean. But we will be back in the water soon. That is our profound right. We will not be denied this existential connection with the oceans and rivers.

Drivers will not be pulled from the wheel because of carnage on the roads, climbers will not be barred from soloing. In our eyes, swimming in the ocean is the simplest, most honest activity of them all. But we are biased.

Ironically, Orient Beach is the safest beach for swimming. It nestles in the lee of the vintage Orient Pier and is protected from the ocean swells by the Western Wall.

This was the first shark attack in recorded memory here.

A beach that should be open to all

Under apartheid, Black South Africans were only allowed to swim at Eastern Beach – 3km to the east. It is a dangerous place, full of huge rips and rocks. I have surfed out there. It is fearsome. 

It is not a place for children, especially those without ocean skills, to swim.

But now they still do, because the Orient, with its four safe swim pools, is a pay beach charging a minimum of R28 per child and up to R40 per adult in summer.

The mass of people were kept out of the complex by apartheid, and now kept at bay by high gate prices. It should be free. DM

The ocean attack

The shark that attacked Janine Lochrenberg was probably a 3.5m-long great white and it bit her at least three times.

She had a wound above her right knee, a big wound on her right thigh, and a wound on her shoulder and right arm, said respected East London Museum principal scientist Kevin Cole.

Cole drew  his observations with input and consensus from SA shark researchers, Dr Geremy Cliff and Dr Matt Dicken.

Cole said: “In the case of the tragic attack on open water swimmer Janine Lochrenberg at the Orient Beach an interpretation of the wound morphology revealed multiple bites. Wounds to the right upper body (shoulder and arm), right thigh and upper right leg.

“A roughly curved or crescent outline was also noticeable where the jaw closed around the thigh area. Lacerations and finer grooves indicative of the serrated triangular teeth of a great white were also observed. 

“Interdental gaps and flesh flaps are larger in victims of a great white as compared to the other mentioned species and this was evident in the wound morphology. Dr Dicken estimates the length of the shark involved to be greater than 3.5m.

“Seven great white sharks were observed from the air in Chintsa Bay two days  before the attack at the Orient Beach.

Cole and colleagues said three shark species were most frequently implicated in shark attacks on humans – the great white, bull and tiger sharks. 

Cole, Cliff and Dicken noted that ocean temperature was  relatively cold at 15°C with clear waters.

“This would rule out the possibility of a bull shark (also based on the fact that there is only one record of this species involved here in a non-fatal incident in 2006). 

“Tiger sharks also prefer warmer waters, being mostly a summer visitor to KuGompo City, and there is no record of a fatal attack by the species in this region.

“Great white sharks, however, have been recorded in many sightings, and a previous record of a fatal incident on a surfer at Nahoon Reef 7km away from Orient Beach,” the scientists said. DM