It is the favoured hunting ground of one of the planet’s most feared and misunderstood apex predators

It is the favoured hunting ground of one of the planet’s most feared, and misunderstood, apex predators. For those who want to look a Great White in the eye, the area also offers the best cage diving in the world.Gladys, all 24 matt black polystyrene inches of her, has survived the initial encounter But she won’t last long. Great White Sharks are surface feeders, ambushing seals and penguins from below. “They are really quite gentle.”We are six nautical miles off Gansbaai, on South Africa’s Cape coast. With 40,000 Cape Fur seals and a colony of Jackass penguins living on the adjoining islets of Dyer Island and Geyser Rock, this stretch of water is known as Shark Alley. Seabirds scatter, there is a sharp intake of breath, and then the 16-foot Great White Shark slides backwards and is swallowed by the gloom.”You see,” shark expert Bryan McFarlane Junior says.

It rolls, exposing a white belly, and sinks back under the waves.One of the crew snatches at the leash, hauling the dummy seal back towards the boat. The shark follows, before cutting left and heading for the motors. Again it strikes, this time towards the propellers, but it is nudged gently away with a bamboo pole that it could smash like matchwood.As the shark rises again, the skipper reaches down and strokes its battered, pock-marked muzzle, exposing the jaws that generations of movie-goers have come to dread. The crew are chattering and stamping warmth back into their legs.

A seasick tourist is throwing up over the side.The wait begins. Coleridge springs to mind: painted ships, painted oceans and only the seabirds, now peppering the deck with their droppings, for company. A clich?Hollywood quiet hangs over the scene as twelve pairs of eyes scour the sea for movement. And then Gladys is hit – the shark comes from below, a dappled flash refracted in the dark water that erupts forth in an explosion of spume and teeth. On deck, colossal rotten tuna are being diced and sliced; huge eyeless heads are attached to ropes and lobbed into the water. Nets are filled with oily liver and hung overboard, sending a bloody slick north towards the shore Up front, sandwiches are handed out. If the number does go up, paediatricians will get pilloried again for failing to protect children.”One of the doctors targeted is Professor David Southall, who was cleared by the GMC this week of allegations relating to his research on newborn babies.

In a personal statement this week he said a “group of malicious individuals [is] seeking to destroy our child protection work”.. Gladys goes in first. Sporting the scars of earlier encounters – a set of tooth marks and a missing flipper – the polystyrene seal is cast low across the waves, settling ten yards out in the gentle bob of shore-bound breakers

Gladys goes in first. Formal complaints had been made against 534 paediatricians of which 3 per cent were upheld by their NHS trust.”We know that one or two children die at the hands of their parents each week and the worry is that this will go up. Professor Craft said the ruling in the first case was significant. “It says something very powerful and I hope it will start to bring the pendulum back in favour of child protection.”The campaign against paediatricians was deterring doctors from taking up child protection work, he said. A surveyshowed 71 paediatricians had faced investigations by the GMC over the past 10 years after complaints about child protection work; none had been upheld Fifteen cases, including Sir Roy’s, were outstanding.