Sardines might not be something you think of all that often, but every year, they do something absolutely mind-boggling. They gather in enormous numbers to embark on their annual journey from their spawning ground in the Cape to South Africa’s east coast. It’s a phenomenon so spectacular it’s known as “The Greatest Shoal on Earth,” and a new surf film, aptly titled Riding the Sardine Run, tells the story of a group of surfers hell bent on chasing waves along a remote stretch of South African coastline as the Greatest Shoal took center stage.
“The sardine run is the largest marine wildlife migration on the planet and sees billions of these tiny fish traveling up the east coast of South Africa as thousands of hungry sharks, dolphins, whales and seabirds give chase,” wrote the creators of the film, Now Now Media, which is comprised of Alan van Gysen and Will Bendix. “The journey starts amongst the kelp forests of Cape Town and takes us past Jeffreys Bay, along the cliff-lined Wild Coast and finally on to the subtropical barrels of KwaZulu-Natal.”
As is often the case with most great surf trips, the waves are not always the best part. It’s the searching, the traveling, the discovery of new things on the way to those waves that truly makes a surf trip memorable.
“Along the way,” Now Now Media’s release continued, “we learned what drives this incredible natural phenomenon and joined the surfers on a wild adventure as they went off the grid hunting for perfect waves – all while trying to avoid the huge predators that follow these fish.”
The surfers involved in this epic trip were Adin Masencamp, Frankie Oberholzer, Micah Margieson, Sophie Bell, Harley Ingleby, Olivia Symcox, along with a handful of others, and although the Greatest Shoal on Earth opens its curtains every year, it’s likely they’ll all be remembering this trip for the rest of their lives.
“Whenever the sardines are around you know it’s winter time with barrels and cooking surf,” says Frankie Oberholzer. “All the creatures – whales, orcas, dolphins, game fish, big giant sharks – everything’s chasing the sardines. It’s wild!”
