Jean-Francois Avenier - known to everybody as "Jifa" (1947 - 2014)

Jifa and Machin, Hermanus 2010

I am very sorry and sad to have to report that Jifa has died from a cancer he fought most courageously and discreetly during the last months.

The illness was diagnosed in August 2013, and although the prognosis didn't look good at that time, there was some hope that with the usual palliative therapies (chemo and radiation), to which Jifa was subjected, he could still have a few relatively good years to look forward to. 

Both Jifa and I developed a deep friendship even though we have met only twice, in South Africa (in 2008 and 2010).

We knew that becoming very close and congenial friends at our age had to be something special as it happens in general rarely, if at all, in the autumn of life. 

We were already over sixty, me closer to seventy, when we began to communicate electronically on a shark platform with each other, both staunch individualists and not really gregarious, except with folks that we liked and felt close to. Grandiloquent people could not only not impress us in the least   -  we avoided them like the plague. 

We did not always agree on issues that seemed important to us but we fully respected each other's opinions.  That type of tolerance and mutual appreciation of diverging points of view is what basically constituted our friendship, as any solid relationship.

Apart from having shared many passions such as photography and diving with sharks, what really made us soul brothers was our self-deprecating sense of humor and an abhorrence for conceited, pathologically ego-driven individuals within, and without, the international shark community. 

Rather than writing a "real" obituary, which I know Jifa would have totally disapproved of, here are three blogs I wrote in 2008 and in 2010 after our last encounter which I believe pretty much describe this intelligent, sensitive, yet extremely strong-minded and life-loving human being. 

http://fleander.blogspot.com/2008/05/jifa-and-mathilda-tiger-shark-girl-who.html

http://fleander.blogspot.com/2010/04/jifa-made-it-yeaaahhhh.html

http://fleander.blogspot.com/2010/01/jifa-and-machin-not-such-odd-couple.html

Only a few months ago, I was toying with the idea of going back to Hermanus next year just to spend a few weeks with Jifa and his dogs "Machin" and "Cheyenne", and perhaps dive with tiger sharks, depending on his state of health. 

Not anymore, as I have no other reason to travel all the way to South Africa knowing that he won't be able to pick me up at the airport with a big grin and his 5.7 liter, 400 hp driving machine he loved so much.  

My world has become a little colder now that Jifa has left it...

A bientot, mon bon ami.

Wolf

BIG tiger shark mamma "Scarface" doing what tiger sharks are "supposed" to do....

Beqa Lagoon Queen "Scarface" getting up close and a bit toooooo personal with
Mike Da Shark

Photograph by Doug Perrine
Click to enlarge

.... trying to eat, at least bite, cameras or other metal stuff.

I have only seen tiger sharks doing it, although it is a fact that Great Whites, and other sharks, are known to bite the bars of dive cages, and mouth propellers of smaller boats.

As tigers are scavengers, and would test-bite almost anything that triggers their gastro-curiosity, I always thought that only cameras with serious electronic components would send out sufficiently strong electric signals the sharks could detect with their ampullae of Lorenzini.

My dilettante deduction was based on the simple assumption that my small, basically mechanical Nikonos V does not emanate enough electric impulses for tigers to excite them, and that my camera was, therefore, unattractive to them, sharks in general.

However, my friend Jifa had an experience that proved my "theory" wrong.

Sijmon de Waal, another South African friend of mine, was not as lucky as Jifa. A large resident tiger shark of Aliwal Shoal, "Karin", aka "Dartboard", used to being photographed a lot, one day unexpectedly snapped at, and literally got away with, Sijmon's underwater still camera.

Sijmon, an athletic 2m man, didn't give up easily, and kicked "Karin" vigorously on its nose - to no avail. "Karin" was stronger and absolutely determined not to let go. The shark eventually swallowed the camera after breaking the attached strobes, and that was that.

As anybody else would have done under the circumstances, Sijmon followed "Karin" frantically to see whether she would regurgitate the 6.000 Dollar equipment but the big lady quickly disappeared rocking and rolling into the greenish-bluish mist of the open sea.

During the following days, "Karin" kept coming back; the camera, however, was gone, resting peacefully somewhere in the unfathomable depth of the Indian ocean...

So, when you photograph or videograph tigers, and if one of 'dem' babes ever feels like tasting your camera - don't think of Sijmon, think of Mike Da Shark: Don't panic, be calm, be gutsy, and just hold on to your valuable equipment.

Look at the image once again to see how Mike did it. Here is a little secret: While intimidatingly tall Mike appears to be super cool and brave fending off "Scarface" with his camera, rather than giving it to her as a ritual offering, you can't tell that he almost 'soiled' his wetsuit in the process!! *)



*) On his own confession, just for the record..... :-)


PS: Last year, Felix, my son, almost lost his underwater video camera to a curious Tiger Beach tiger girl. Felix held the housing with a firm grip, saved it but forgot to turn off the camera, and got, thus, a very captivating inside view of the tiger's teethy mouth. So far, Felix has been adamant to post the video clip - too bad. Let me talk to him again - he might change his mind.

Jifa made it!! Yeaaahhhh!!

Da old Wolf playing with an Aliwal Shoal tiger lady.
Photo: Jean-Francois Avenier

Click on image to enlarge

Two years ago, Jifa, aka Jean-Francois Avenier, seemed to have serious eardrum problems. As he could not equalize the pressure, he had to stay at the surface all the time - which greatly limited his photography.

Now, with silicone earcaps attached to his mask, and some expert advice from top freediver William Winram, Jifa finally managed to go down to 7-8 meters - and take real underwater photographs, not underwater images shot slightly below the surface.

He sent me the above picture with a laconic comment: "Better than nothing".

C'mon, Jifa, I know that despite being a hard-core Parisian you are modest, but you don't have to be that modest...

I think this is a fantastic shot!

What pleases me even more about this pic is that you took it with your good ol' Nikonos V, soul bro!!

Jifa and "Machin": Not such an odd couple.

When my friend Jifa lost his two huskies, "Gold Rush" and "Ghost", to old age (16 and 17) within less than a year, he was absolutely devastated. Jifa was not just the pack leader for them; over their long lives they also became the center of his life.

Losing a dog, any animal you grew attached to, is no less painful than losing a close relative or a good friend.

Rationally, Jifa knew that he would have to get a 'new' dog in order to let the healing effect of the mourning process come to a natural end. But emotionally he must have had a hard time before deciding to fill the void in his house with the presence of a pup.

Not a pup anymore but far from being a dignified adult dog... :-)
Photo by: Wolfgang Leander

However, Jifa managed to convince himself that "Gold Rush" and "Ghost" would have approved of little "Machin", a husky, not just for taking their place but rather to honor their memory and at the same time as an act of affirmation of life and its continuity.

Pure Love...
Photo: Wolfgang Leander

"Machin"? What kind of a name is that for a living creature? 'Machin' means 'thing' in colloquial French. If you don't know, or forgot, the word of something, or even a person, you'd say: "Qu'est-ce que c'est ce machin la?" (= "What is this thing over there?").

Would you name your dog "Thing"? You probably wouldn't, would you?

Well, Jifa did.

Being a pragmatic man, and not precisely a youngster anymore, Jifa must have figured that entering advanced age will surely be accompanied by a gradual loss of memory - incidentally a stage I am already, and not unhappily, in. Thus, to avoid the embarrassing situation of wanting to address his dog but having momentarily, or even permanently, forgotten his name, "Machin" would always come to his mind.

Smart, huh?

Jifa talking French to "Machin" - as Frederick the Great of Prussia once said to Voltaire: "German is a language for horses, French for sophisticated people." :-)
Photo: Wolfgang Leander

Apropos addressing "Machin" - Jifa does it in French, sometimes in English, and that are the only languages "Machin" understands. I tried to speak German to "Machin" assuming that a language that sounds like barking commands, with words such as "Schtillgeschtanden!"; "Achtung!"; "Nawirdsbalduschweinehund!", would be immediately, and naturally, assimilated by any dog.

Little did I know - "Machin" looked at me quite bewildered, as if to say: "What kind of an oegly language iss ssat?".

To get this you have to know that Jifa, and by extension "Machin", speaks an exquisitely rich English with a strong French accent. Actually, he speaks French when he speaks English - or, to be more precise: He speaks French using English words - and his hands which give his speech a distinct Mediterranean flavor.

Amputated eloquence: Jifa making a point with just one hand.
Photo: Wolfgang Leander

Talking with his hands is certainly an expressive rhetorical tool - the problem is that Jifa "talks" that way even when he speeds with his Chevy 5,7 l 400 HP "Lumina". Thus, if you sit next to him driving at 210 km/h and want to feel safe, just tell him politely but firmly to please shut up, and he will automatically hold on tightly to the steering wheel with both hands.

With the passage of the next years I can vividly imagine Jifa and "Machin" looking even more like each other than they do now.

"Machin" and Jifa: Definitely not an odd couple!
Photo: Wolfgang Leander

However, what is difficult to foresee at this point is who will look more like the other: Jifa like "Machin" or "Machin" like Jifa....

Only time will tell.

Out of South Africa.

So far so good.

Diving has not been that great - so far.

On the other hand meeting old friends, and having made some memorable new acquaintances, has been so good for the soul:

First and foremost "Jifa", also known as Jean-Francois Avenier, who invited me to be his guest during my first week in South Africa; his 15-month old fabulous husky, "Machin", with whom I immediately fell in love; Andre Hartman, the legendary Great White Sharkman, a towering man with huge hands and a huge heart; the Addisons of Blue Wilderness; Fred Buyle and William Winram, world-class freedivers with impressive achievements; and others.

Two old shark-nut farts: Andre Hartman and Wolf.
Photo: Jean-Francois Avenier

Jifa, who is a good friend of Andre, arranged for a one day marine excursion in the larger Gaansbai area to observe great whites. Andre managed to attract four beauties close to the boat; their sizes ranged between 1,60 and 3 meters, the largest being a self-confident and dominant male. Too bad we could not swim with them.

"Better than nothing..."
Photo: Jean-Francois Avenier

There are severe restrictions on diving with great whites in South Africa; not only that - we were in an area where abalones are protected, and no one can dive there for any purpose whatsoever.

As anywhere else in the world, South African government officials only complicate the lives of others, not theirs. Thus, they simply established that merely carrying basic diving equipment in your boat proves you automatically guilty of suspected poaching with heavy fines and even jail terms.

We had two sub-standard days at Aliwal Shoal with 3 to 5 m visibility and just one tiger shark. However, this female tiger was "Sabine", an Aliwal Shoal resident shark during the past eight years except for the last two years she spent elsewhere. To see her back "home" filled us with joy.

While "Sabine" fared well, many others did not. Far too many tiger sharks have either been killed by local fishermen who fear and hate sharks, or met their untimely deaths in the infamous shark nets placed along the beaches of Kwa Zulu Natal.

Tomorrow, March 25, we are planning a trip to the Protea Banks, famous for its bull sharks. I have never dived with bull sharks, and am quite excited about the prospect of seeing them. As you can imagine, we all cross our fingers and hope for the best: Best visibility, best bull interaction, best everything!!

Last, but definitely not least................................ "Machin"!!!!

Photo: Jean-Francois Avenier

Jifa and Mathilda - the tiger shark girl who loves to collect cameras

Mathilda
Photograph: Wolfgang Leander
Click to enlarge

Jifa (left) explaining to Wolf how to fend off a 4m tiger shark with a burning cigarette.
Photograph: Felix Leander
Click to enlarge

Jifa is old school French (down to earth, elegant, "foenny" - verrrry French, much like Yves Montand or Jacques-Yves Cousteau) and lives in South Africa, in Hermanus, to be precise. Why South Africa? Ahhhhh, bon alors.... let me make a VERRRRRY long story VERRRRRRY short:

Jifa loves great white sharks, and his friend Andre Hartmann suggested that he should move to White Shark country, which is what Jifa did about six years ago.

I have known Jifa virtually through a shark-list, and after exchanging a few private mails and seeing how combative and critical Jifa is, I thought I should get to know this interesting European guy.

Jifa knew about my plans to go back to South Africa in March 2008, so we decided to meet. That happened about two months ago at the airport in Cape Town. We recognized each other right away, both greying old farts, both rather slim, both wearing sharky T-shirts, and we greeted each other as good old friends do - with a big hug and a kiss!

You can think whatever you want: We are not .... OK? :-)

Anyway. Jifa joined me about three weeks later in Tiger Shark country (Umkomaas / Scottburgh). He had never dived with tigers, and was probably - how should I put it? - a bit apprehensive of the alleged danger "man-eating" tiger sharks pose according to all those shark experts who have never dived with these gentle beasts.

Our first joint dive was rather unusual. Jifa had to fix a new and extremely complicated mask with earflaps, and meticulously check his old camera, a venerable Nikonos V, on the inflatable rubber boat which took him about 40 (forty!!) minutes.

He should have done all that at the hotel, right? He didn't. You have to know that Jifa is: 1) a perfectly chaotic person, and 2) at the same time a completely chaotic perfectionist - difficult to understand??? Well, I do as I am just like him in those respects, and in some others, too...

Back to our first joint dive: I was in the water playing with, and photographing, the tigers girls long before Jifa finally felt that he was ready to join everybody else, armed with his flashy orange colored camera.

I don't think I have ever seen a shorter dive in my whole life - Jifa cautiously slipped into the water, looked down on his camera, doing something, probably re-checking the pre-set focus, and the next thing I saw was good olf Jifa fending off a 4 m tiger shark who wanted to grab his Nikonos. He then rushed back to the boat with an almost invisible thread of blood trailing behind him! This all happened in a matter of maybe 45 seconds.

For the sake of authenticity, here is Jifa's own account of that memorable tiger shark encounter:

Right back from Umkomaas where I had the utmost pleasure to dive with Tiger sharks, our Wolfgang and his son Felix (yes, all together!) on Aliwal Shoal, I believe it is my duty to inform members of this group about a shark "attack" which oddly enough came unnoticed to 'The Sun'. Which is a shame, even a scandal, especially because the victim was no other one than me (well, mainly my Nikonos camera, but anyway... ).

And so, on my very first day of diving, I was the very last one to enter the water after an awfully long preparation and checking (and double-checking and triple-checking) of a new mask supposed to protect my right ear-drum, three times perforated over the last nine years and thus quite fragile.

Because of the necessity of getting used to this mask, I had decided to start with free-diving rather than scuba, as initially planned. Immediatly, I was under the charm of tens and tens of Blacktips (Carcharhinus limbatus) graciously "balleting" through a crystal clear (and deliciously lukewarm) water, and having not seen sharks "live" since a hell of a long time (for frustrating but unavoidable business reasons, I have unfortunately been spending much more time in front on my computer screen than underwater these last years), I started to photograph them.

One shot, then re-arming (for those not in the knowledge, the Nikonos V is a non-reflex non-digital camera, and you need to re-arm after each shot), a second shot, then re- arming... and impossible to bring the viewfinder to my eye! Considering that the camera was probably 30 cm/1 foot from my face, all I could see was a wide white stripe above the camera, that I successfuly managed to push away with my left hand without having to apply a huge strength.

The camera was back to its legal owner, but the white stripe was still there and I pushed it again, and it disappeared. I believe I was smiling around my snorkel as it was reminding me of a young dog jumping at a sandwich just before you bring it to your mouth (my old husky was simply brilliant at this game when he was a teenager).

Somewhere in the very bottom of the spongious thing which is my brain, a sensor had registered that, for a Blacktip, the lower part of this snout was weirdly not pointed, and amazingly wide. But, as my main concern was to get my camera back, it remained some kind of unnoticed by the main unit... And I went my way, ready to take a breath and go down a little bit, when I felt a little pricking on my right third finger.

This time, my brain was fast, as I had the time to think "Oh sh...t!" before even looking at it. It was bleeding, and quite profusely. OK, I know that the story of human blood attracting sharks is nowadays almost unanimously considered as a legend, but I decided that I had a slight problem with the "almost", that, at this very moment, I didn't feel like contributing to the dispelling of this myth, and that, considering my trip to Umkomaas, 36 hours earlier, had ended with an exploded tyre and two hours of waiting at night in a quite "touchy" area (some humans are far more dangerous than sharks), my private luck tank was possibly in need of a small refilling, and I made it back to the boat.

Overall duration of this first "dive": probably one minute, and I hadn't seen one single Tiger.

Thank you Mathilda!

Mathilda? Of course I had seen a Tiger, and really close. It is only when Wolf came back on the boat for reloading his own Nikonos that I learnt the author of this savage aggression was a 4 metre female Tiger shark, as he had witnessed everything! She was right under the surface when I entered the water, and I only looked under myself. Then she came to me from behind and then underneath, so I never saw her (but her snout... ).

Wolfgang was not 100% positive, it might also have been Dartboard (a nickname earned through numberless taggings), but Mathilda had already stolen two cameras within the previous two weeks, so it is quite difficult not to suspect her first... Maybe she decided to start a private collection, or she doesn't like to be photographed or filmed? The truth is most likely that she's very investigative and is attracted to sun reflections on lenses.

It finally happened that, despite being quite deep, the cut didn't need any stitches, and I was of course back in the water the day after, with a surgical plastic glove under the normal underwater one - still this thing about blood.

I'm not afraid of sharks, but some old ideas are hard to completely chase away, sorry :-). It seems I will finally keep a small scar. But I'm afraid it will not be very helpful for my macho ego, as nobody will believe that a hardly 1 cm/half an inch one is the result of a 4M/13ft Tiger shark "bite"...

The truth is of course that I cut myself on a tooth rather than have been bitten, and the most amazing point is the gentleness and accuracy of this bite, which was actually an investigative mouthing. The slight scratches on my Nikonos body (not on the lens, thankfully : a 15 mm is quite expensive!) are extremely superficial, and it is only because my hand was on it that it got "bitten".

I have checked that you don't get a substantial premium when declaring an unprovoked shark attack, and I feel too lazy to write to 'The Sun' (pity, because I'm pretty sure they would have made me worldwide famous!), so the story of this horrendous shark attack will remain between us.

Last but not least, to all shark interested people : do go and dive in Aliwal Shoal, by all means. Free or/and scuba diving, never mind. If you're not already, you will come back in love with Tigers. With Blacktips as well, but it's very unfair to them, as they're beautiful and not that small sharks (around 2M/7ft) : as soon as you see your first Tiger, you don't even notice them anymore!

Jifa (= Jean-Francois Avenier)

Why don't such breath-taking shark 'incidents' ever happen to me??? That's not fair!! :-)

Another friend of mine, Folkart, a Teutonic 2m giant with hardly any shark diving experience, once had the rare pleasure of having been mouthed rather lovingly by a female tiger shark double his body size.

The 4m girl actually had Folkart's torso in her huge mouth - and only left her teeth marks without even biting through his 5mm wetsuit. *) A neoprene dive suit is not really an effective shield against tiger shark bites when you consider that these creatures can shred turtles into pieces with their powerful jaws.

I dive with these large sharks 'up close and personal' - and I mean really 'up close', like kissing their heads, but they hardly react to my affectionately fondling them. It is as if I would not exist for them. I don't even get a threatening posture from the striped beauties.

As I always say, indifference hurts more than aggression...... :-(

Greetings, Jifa, mon bon ami, I am looking forward to sharing some more unique shark dive adventures with you in the future!!


*) I don't know whether Folkart bought a new wetsuit - probably not. Folkart is a relatively well-to-do guy, but he is also a Swabian, and Swabians are known to be the German version of Scots - obsessively austere and thrifty folks, to put it nicely. So, if you ever meet Folkart diving somewhere, chances are that you will see the souvenir of that remarkable tiger love bite on his worn wetsuit....