Hey dive buddies! Thank you for a year of amazing dives and good friendships. Please find yourself in this selection of happy diver photos taken in 2013. I’m sorry we don’t have one from every single dive we did. We look forward to many more good dives together in 2014!
Month: December 2013
Video footage of Shark Reef (Ras Mohammed National Park, Red Sea)
We visited Shark Reef in the Ras Mohammed National Park as part of a drift dive that also took us past Yolanda Reef (more on that later). Here are two short videos I took during our dive. This one shows part of the coral garden on the plateau that separates Shark Reef from Yolanda Reef:
Here is a little panorama. The water was blue for ages!
Dive sites (Red Sea): Shark Reef (Ras Mohammed National Park)
Shark Reef is inside the Ras Mohammed National Park, an area which provided (I thought) the most spectacular dives of our Red Sea liveaboard trip. It is a magnificent advertisement for marine protected areas. The visibility was so good as to be impossible to estimate – I’ve said it was 40 metres in my dive summary below, but really, who can say? I could see as far as I wanted to see.
Shark Reef is part of the top of a pinnacle that drops to about 800 metres’ depth. As it approaches the surface, it splits into two smaller pinnacles which are called Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef, which we actually ended up visiting on the same dive (but I’ll write about Yolanda Reef separately). The water here is blue, like ink, and we enjoyed a nice little current that pushed us along from one pinnacle to the next with the reef on our right hand side. On the seaward side we first had deep blue water, and then a coral garden (shown in the photo above) on the plateau between Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef that sloped gently upwards.
We didn’t see a lot of large fish, but I admit to being so awed by the topography and visibility that with all the head swivelling I was doing, I probably wouldn’t have noticed a whale unless it had swum right into my BCD. Because the reef drops off into such deep water, and there are such powerful currents in the region, there is always a good possibility of seeing some large pelagic creatures.
We did see huge, swirling schools of smaller fish – cardinal fish, fusiliers, damselfish, and others whose names I didn’t know. At the end of the dive we arrived at Yolanda Reef, where a ship carrying bathroom supplies ran aground in 1980. There was an incredibly powerful current rushing down this part of the reef from the shallows towards the deeper water, and this ended our dive!
We liked Yolanda Reef and its scattered bathroom fittings so much that we returned to dive it again a couple of hours later. The wreck of the ship is actually 200 metres below Yolanda Reef, but it made a big mess as it went down! We surfaced close to the reef in order to avoid a haircut from one of the many large dive boats tooling around the area. Kate and Veronica almost got run down by one of them, and had to ditch their SMB and descend at speed to avoid an accident. Not cool!
Dive date: 20 October 2013
Air temperature: 26 degrees
Water temperature: 27 degrees
Maximum depth: 20.9 metres
Visibility: 40 metres
Dive duration: 41 minutes
Scuba diving for kids
- Are you looking for a way to keep your family busy during the school holidays?
- Do you enjoy being outdoors and exploring the beautiful environment around us?
- Would your child benefit from the sense of achievement that comes from mastering a new set of skills, and the enjoyment that comes from spending time in the ocean?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, read on!
It is a little known fact that children as young as 10 years old can qualify as scuba divers, allowing them to dive with a certified adult diver or scuba instructor. It’s often easier for children to learn the new skills that are associated with scuba diving, because they listen and imitate well, they usually don’t have a lot of built-in hang ups and fears, and it’s really exciting for them to be learning something new.
Kids aged 8-9 are too young to become certified divers, but there is a choice of programs available that allow them to experience breathing underwater in the safe, controlled environment of a swimming pool. If the bug bites, they can complete the course to become fully qualified Junior Open Water divers once they turn 10.
Scuba diving is a great activity for the family to do together – I have taught family groups comprising parents and children, and it’s always a lot of fun. Alternatively, if your kids are keen to dive but you would rather sunbathe on the beach or go for a run with the dogs, that’s also fine! I conduct childrens’ dive course with a high ratio of supervisors (Instructors and Divemasters) to participants.
The confined-water (swimming pool) part of all our dive courses is conducted at our pool in Sun Valley, and the sea dives (for courses with participants age 10+) are usually conducted from Long Beach in Simon’s Town, and off our boat, Seahorse, launching from False Bay Yacht Club or Hout Bay depending on the weather conditions.
Ages 8-9
The PADI Bubblemakers and and SDI Future Buddies programs are for kids aged eight and up, and introduce scuba diving in a swimming pool environment. The PADI Seal Team program is available for the same age group, and involve some basic scuba skills and underwater missions to further increase diving competence.
Ages 10 – 15
SDI Junior Open Water or PADI Junior Open Water course is for wannabe divers aged 10 and up. These courses qualify kids to dive to 12 metres while with a certified adult diver or instructor, and when they turn 15 it is possible to upgrade to a regular Open Water qualification.
Age 12-15
From the age of 12, youngsters can earn the PADI Junior Advanced Diver (qualifying them to dive to 21 metres while with a certified adult diver) and Junior Rescue Diver qualifications.
To see all the dive courses we offer, visit our website. For more information about scuba courses for kids or any other diving related enquiries, use the contact form below to send a message:
Friday photo: Scarborough beach (2)
Here’s the view on Scarborough beach looking north, towards Misty Cliffs (the mist is visible in the distance). There’s a little river flowing over the beach into the sea, just visible to the left of the boardwalk.
Seahorse at sea
Here’s a lovely little boat in False Bay on a very grey day…
If you celebrate the day, then merry Christmas to you, by the way!
Exploring: The shark exclusion net at Fish Hoek beach
One Tuesday in early December, Tony escorted some members of the media – Murray Williams of the Cape Argus, and Bruce Hong of Cape Talk radio, on a dive along the inside of the shark exclusion net at Fish Hoek beach. It was just before the start of the school holidays, and since the net has been trialled multiple times by now and is working well, it’s a good time to raise awareness of the additional beach safety and – importantly – peace of mind that the net offers. I tagged along as photographer.
The net at Fish Hoek beach is a world first. It has a fine mesh that is highly visible underwater, and is designed not to catch anything – unlike the shark gill nets in KwaZulu Natal. The net is put out in the morning and retrieved at the end of the day, but only when sea conditions allow it. The south easterly wind can bring huge quantities of kelp into Fish Hoek bay which would foul the net, so when there is a strong south easter the net cannot be deployed.
If you’re a water person, please educate yourself on how the net works, and its intention, and share it with your friends. Even now, nine months after the trial started, I hear uninformed comments from people who have not bothered to do any reading about the net, and assume it’s the same kind of net as the ones in Durban. It’s not. The whole idea is that nothing – no sharks, no humans, no klipfish – gets hurt. Shark Spotters and the City of Cape Town have been very clear on this from the start. I had a bit of a rant about this late last year.
I digress. We went to the beach, got suited up, and went to check out the net. It was spring low tide, so at its southernmost end we were in about 2 metres of water. The net is high enough that when the tide comes in and the yellow floats rise with the water level, it simply unfurls further downwards, making an unbroken curtain. The lower portion of the net rests on the sand, with two parallel weighted lines to ensure that it lies flat. You can see that in the photo above Murray is gripping one of these leaded lines, and that there is a fairly large amount of net waiting on the sand for higher tides.
We stuck close to the net, and didn’t see much marine life on the sandy bottom. I spotted a large sand shark (when I say I “spotted” him, I mean that I almost landed on top of him). We were mutually surprised, and he zipped away into the bay, sliding neatly under the bottom of the net. I also saw a box jelly cruising along the net. Given my recent history with box jellies, I kept clear! The sea floor in the area where the net is deployed is level, sandy and free from rocks. There’s more life on the catwalk side, where beautiful rock pools wait to be snorkelled.
We were accompanied by Monwabisi Sikweyiya, who is the Field Manager of Shark Spotters. He is a hero and I always feel a bit star-struck when I see him (although he has no idea why – he probably just thinks there’s something wrong with me). He swims along the net regularly – someone does each time it is deployed, actually – to make sure that it’s released properly and hanging straight down.
Swimming inside the net is completely voluntary. When a shark is seen in Fish Hoek bay the Shark Spotter still sounds the siren and the flag is raised to clear the water. The Shark Spotters team are still waiting to see how a shark will respond to the net when it swims close enough to be aware of it. So far none of the local sharks have come close to the net, as the summer season when sharks move inshore has only just started. Tony was half hoping that we’d be swimming along inside the net, look out through the mesh – and blammo! – see a great white shark. But we had no such luck, if that is the right word.
You can read the article that Murray Williams from the Argus wrote after the dive, here.
Dive date: 3 December 2013
Air temperature: 22 degrees
Water temperature: 17 degrees
Maximum depth: 2.3 metres
Visibility: 4 metres
Dive duration: 25 minutes
A Festivus miracle: Red Sea shenanigans!
Here are two special Festivus miracles (forgive the poetic licence) for you: videos I took while diving in the Red Sea in October. Don’t know what Festivus is? Educate yourself!
Airing of Grievances
Kate airs her grievances at Sha’ab Abu Nuhas.
Feats of Strength
Ok not really. It’s just Kate sneaking up on Christo, who was oblivious to the world around him, intently stalking what he thought was some kind of grouper (which turned out to be some broken plumbing or coral debris, I forget). This clip is only six seconds long, so you’ll have to watch it more than once to fully appreciate its beauty.
I should point out that Tony denies all responsibility for teaching Kate the sort of antisocial behaviour you see here. Despite what this picture would suggest.
Lecture: Adam Barnett & Alison Kock update on sevengill cowshark research in False Bay
Late in November 2012 we attended a talk about the research being done on broadnose sevengill cowsharks, at the Save Our Seas Shark Centre in Kalk Bay. Almost exactly a year later, in November 2013, Shark Spotters Research Manager Alison Kock, and Deakin University researcher and OceansIQ founder Adam Barnett (who we’ve listened to before) updated us on the sevengill project in False Bay.
I’d suggest you read through my write up of Dr Barnett’s talk last November. There’s a lot of background information on these beautiful animals in that post.
Why tagging studies need to be done
Here is an explanation, in relatively simple terms, of why cowsharks are tagged for scientific research. Tell your friends.
- We don’t know much about sevengill cowshark behaviour and habitat use in South Africa’s waters. Actually we know almost nothing.
- Because we don’t know for sure where they mate, give birth, and rest, we don’t know how best to protect them.
- We can’t protect every bit of coastal water and every species of fish. Because why? Because we live in the real world, where there are extensive commercial interests, finite amounts of funding, and a lack of resources and will to police things.
- We can’t go on suspicions and gut feel when deciding which areas and species to protect. This is because there are extremely limited resources (see above), and designating a certain area an MPA or a no-fishing zone needs iron-clad justification. Just try and tell an angler that he can’t fish somewhere, without giving a reason.
- Scientific research provides us with facts, on the basis of which wise and informed decisions can be made.
- The way to find out, scientifically, where sevengill cowsharks go, and what they do there, is to tag them. There is no other way to find out what they do when they’re not swimming around you at Shark Alley. The ocean is (ahem) quite large.
- Once we know where they go, we can find out how to protect them. The most important sevengill habitats to conserve are those related to reproduction. The fact that Shark Alley is in an Marine Protected Area isn’t enough: the sharks don’t give birth there, and there is almost no policing of MPAs in South African anyway. A baby sevengill is about 45 centimetres long. Have you ever seen one less than a metre long at Miller’s Point? I thought not.
If you enjoy diving with the sevengills (from the shore or a boat), if you enjoy photographing them and winning photo competitions with your images, if you make money from taking other divers to see these sharks, or if you’re in favour of making the best effort to get the maximum results with the very limited conservation resources that are available in South Africa, then I hope you can see that this is vital research for the future of the species.
What sort of tags are used?
There are two types of tags suitable for use on sevengills. The primary one is acoustic tags, which send out a ping every two minutes. Receivers placed in False Bay and around South Africa’s coast (many of them part of the Ocean Tracking Network) register and save these pings when a shark is close enough (up to 500 metres away in deep, still water; significantly less in shallow, noisy areas). The data is downloaded from the receiver after retrieving it from its position in the sea.
Acoustic tags are about the size of your little finger and are surgically inserted into the shark’s abdomen. The procedure takes approximately two minutes and the incision heals remarkably fast (as animals that bite each other during mating, it’s in a shark’s best evolutionary interest to be a fast healer). Their battery life is measured in years, so a tagged shark can provide data over multiple reproductive cycles. This is how large scale movement patterns are picked up, much like the white shark research in the US that I wrote about recently. This enables scientists to identify what the sharks use different areas for.
The other type of tag that has been used on three of our local sevengills so far is a pop up archival tag (PAT). Meaghen McCord explained these tags to us when she talked about her research on bull sharks in the Breede River. These tags are applied externally and programmed to release from the shark and float to the surface after a certain number of days. On the surface, they broadcast their location and start transmitting some of the data that they’ve collected. The full suite of data, including diving depths, is only accessible if the tag is physically retrieved.
What results have been obtained so far?
So far seventeen female cowsharks have been tagged with acoustic tags. The tagging was done in March, at Shark Alley. Blood and tissue samples, from which hormone levels can be obtained (to indicate a readiness to mate, or pregnancy, for example), were also taken.
Three PAT tags were deployed. One popped up after 48 days far out to sea on Agulhas Bank, the other came off after 88 days between Gordon’s Bay and Pringle Bay, and the third came off after 136 days close to Silwerstroom Beach on the West Coast, just before Langebaan. The cowshark whose tag popped off on Agulhas bank had spent most of its time at depths between 10 and 60 metres. The West Coast shark had spent the bulk of its time between 10 and 40 metres’ depth. The False Bay shark, interestingly, recorded most of its time at depths of between 40 and 60 metres – pretty much the maximum depth you can get in False Bay. So it didn’t just hang out at Shark Alley while in False Bay!
More detailed results will be made available on the Shark Spotters blog. It’s early days yet!
How you can help
Go and like the Spot the Sevengill Shark – Cape Town page on facebook. Then get your camera out and go for a dive, or dig through your photo library. The researchers are looking for photographs of sevengills taken from above, with the following accompanying information: the date, the shark’s gender (males have two external claspers, females have smooth abdomens), and the location. Software and some human intervention (when the computer falls over) will be used to identify sharks by the markings on their bodies. This will enable the researchers to build a database of shark individuals, and to track their presence at the known aggregation sites visited by recreational scuba divers.
There is a slightly similar citizen science project on sevengills happening in San Diego. It’s very exciting for us to be able to advance the cause of a species that is so charismatic and beloved by the Cape Town diving community.
False Bay jellyfish bloom
It’s not Jellyfish Lake in Palau by any stretch of the imagination, but we had some impressive jellyfish action in False Bay during September and October this year. I filmed these two videos at Outer Photographer’s Reef, at the safety stop.
These purple beauties are compass sea jellies, but we also saw impressive blooms of box jellyfish that lasted for several weeks, right into November. It’s possible that this congregation of sea jellies was caused by a quirk of a current somewhere, that herded them all into False Bay and then prevented their departure. There’s also the possibility that they found something nice to eat in False Bay, perhaps because of the large volume of sewerage that gets pumped out into the ocean all around this special piece of coastline.
Scientists aren’t actually sure what causes jellyfish blooms, but ultimate causes seem to be warmer oceans and increased nutrient loadings in coastal waters as a result of human activities.
Box jellies can deliver a nasty sting – it’s the luck of the draw whether it’s bad or not, but if it is, you can suffer for days. It’s also distinctly possible that with repeated stings you will become more sensitised to their venom. So take care!