Summer means giant short tailed sting rays close to shore, at our most frequented dive sites in Cape Town. During winter these creatures prefer much deeper water (up to 500m deep) offshore.

These rays are the largest sting rays, and can grow to at least 2 metres across (and possibly larger). While harmless, they do have a venomous barb on their tails which could inflict a serious wound if you got yourself in the wrong position relative to it. When threatened, they apparently raise their tails over their backs like a scorpion.

They are large enough to have relatively few predators, and most of those are sharks and killer whales. Seeing one is (for me) an extremely exciting event. The poor camera work and heavy breathing on these two videos (both taken on the same dive, on 31 December 2011, but of different rays) attests to my excitement. The visibilty was not stellar on that day – perhaps 4 metres – but because the rays stir up a lot of sand with their wings and mouths (snuffling for worms and white mussels in the sand) it’s significantly less here.

There’s some good detail on these creatures, which are surprisingly widely distributed, on (dare I say it) Wikipedia. Click here.

Subway Scuba

Subway Dive Centre is a PADI 5* Instructor Development Centre, National Geographic Dive Centre and Project AWARE Official Partner located in the town of Bugibba on the island of Malta. I wish I could remember the details of how I selected to dive with them rather than one of the approximately 40 other dive centres on the Maltese islands… I seem to recall it had to do with their dive packages, which were comprehensive, included dives on both Malta and Gozo, and were at a reasonable rate. I also checked Scubaboard.com for reviews and tips. Being a 5 star IDC didn’t hurt either, though one can’t tell anything about the character and integrity of a dive centre’s staff just from a rating.

Subway Scuba, Bugibba, Malta

Subway Scuba is aptly named, being located almost entirely underground! The centre contains probably the best compressor in Malta (we saw a number of other dive centre staff visiting to mix gas – including Trimix – for their clients), an indoor pool, a shop, classroom, a gear washing area (with a grid roof open to the elements, for quick drying) and lots of space to store your rental gear (in a box labelled with your name) for the duration of your stay. I really liked that for the five days we dived with them, we used the same kit every day. My wetsuit made me look like a cross between the Michelin Man and a cowboy, but it was incredibly comfortable and had a lot of features that one doesn’t expect on a basic rental wetsuit, such as pockets, a compass, and a dive computer strap holder.

Lina Fabri handled the flurry of emails I sent in order to make our booking (I also used one of Subway’s recommendations for accommodation in Malta, Falcon Court, which was just around the corner from the dive centre), as well as some queries I sent her after we went home regarding particular fish we’d seen that I couldn’t identify. While we were in Malta, Lana Markov assisted us from day to day, and her husband Sergey was our extremely marvellous Divemaster. We also spent one day (Sergey had to rest, poor man!) diving with Publio Attard, who we loved meeting because he is Maltese and gave us his perspective on life in Malta. Olga, the owner of Subway, as well as Lana and Sergey, are all Russian, and all the other divers we dived with during our stay were very impressive Russian divers. Sergey obligingly did two dive briefings at each site, one in English and one in Russian.

Me in my dorky (but awesome) rental wetsuit

The dives Tony and I did were all in the recreational range, up to 40 metres, but technical diving is definitely possible in Malta with submarines and many other sites available to those who want to go deeper. Subway offers an Inspiration rebreather course as well as advanced wreck, Trimix, cavern and cave courses. With its many overhead environments and purposely scuttled wrecks, as well as lovely warm water, I can’t think of a better place to get one of these qualifications. It seems however that for guided dives, the focus is on recreational diving.

Fish of Malta

Tony and I felt very welcome at Subway, and, very importantly, comfortable that safety was an absolute priority. Our gear was in good order, the cylinders were in date, and every time we used Nitrox we had the opportunity (which we took, otherwise we’d have been instructed to!) to check the mix, the maximum depth it permitted, and to sign our understanding of those facts. Our experience at Subway Scuba was very positive overall.

Remember that you know all about Pop Up Archival Tags already!

Flat, clear summer seas on the Atlantic seaboard (and the Blue Flash boat)

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Among my favourite friends at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town are the white steenbras or pignose grunter (Lithognathus lithognathus) that live in the Kelp Forest exhibit. They seem to prefer one particular window, and every time I pass by they are gathered there, bumping gently against the glass when I raise my hands to greet them. The literature about the exhibit indicates that it’s extremely rare to see such large specimens in the wild, as white steenbras have been under signifcant fishing pressure for decades.

Today they are reserved for recreational fishermen, and are a very sought after fish (which has led to gross overfishing). They can grow up to 1 metre in length and weigh up to 30 kilograms. They’re fairly solitary fish, but during certain times of the year (such as summer in the south Western Cape) they aggregate into schools. They have seven dark vertical bars on their silver bodies, thick lips and small mouths. They typically feed on white mussels, crabs, sand prawns, and worms. They are endemic to South Africa.

White steenbras spawn in estuaries along the eastern Cape coast, and mass spawning migrations to these areas occur in autumn (March-May). This preference for estuarine spawning (juveniles actually spend up to two years in nearly fresh water before coming out to sea) makes them extremely sensitive to degradation of their spawning locations. Estuaries in Southern Africa have never been well managed.

White steenbras on the Clan Stuart

My first (and so far only) encounter with a school of white steenbras – or indeed, any white steenbras at all – was during a dive on the wreck of the Clan Stuart on new year’s day. We were a fairly large group – seven in total. Fishermen were active on the beach in front of the wreck, so we took care to avoid their lines as we went in. The visibility was maybe three metres, and seconds after reaching the wreck we were surrounded by a large school of very twitchy, good-sized steenbras. They swam around and around us, changing direction at random, and then disappeared. A few minutes later they found us again, and repeated the same agitated behaviour.

From the first moment we encountered them, Tony, Laurence and I (we would later discover) all began to feel incredibly uncomfortable. The fish were behaving as if something was chasing them, and they seemed to be trying to use us as cover. What could be chasing a steenbras? These are large, confident fish.

White steenbras on the Clan Stuart

The feeling of discomfort and anxiety continued for the rest of the dive. Laurence (lost the group and didn’t like the idea of being in the water alone, with poor visiblity and a large predator on the prowl) and two of the other divers (equalisation problems) aborted the dive early, leaving me, Tony and his two students – both tourists – to explore the wreck a little and make our way back to shore. It was probably one of the three least enjoyable dives I’ve ever done.

We’re fairly sure that a great white shark was hunting in the vicinity, spooking the fish. The concern was not so much that it would try to target the divers, but that we’d get in between it and its prey (as happened to Lloyd Skinner), and meet with misfortune that way. I was also concerned about getting munched because that very morning I’d given a sleepy interview on Radio 702 about sharks in False Bay, from the perspective of small business owners. It would be embarrassing to state that sharks don’t explicitly target humans in the water as prey, and then get eaten by one.