Saturday: Boat or shore dives – choice to be confirmed tomorrow afternoon
We had a good dive at Long Beach on Sunday – with about 6 metre visibility and 16 degree water, it was a sample of the good winter conditions that False Bay can deliver, but not too cold!
This Saturday looks good for either boat or shore diving. I’ll confirm which tomorrow afternoon after I’ve looked at conditions and seen how the weather has panned out. Let me know if you want to dive.
Klipfish at Long Beach
Marine ecosystems MOOC from UCT
The University of Cape Town has added an online course dealing with large marine ecosystems to the excellent Coursera platform. The course starts on 14 May, but will be repeated every few months. If you’re ocean-curious, this is for you. Sign up here – it’s free, just select the option without a certificate.
We dived out of Hout Bay last weekend, visiting the Oakburn and BOS 400 on one dive, and the kelp forest a bit north of Duiker Island for the second dive. Liam spotted a huge ocean sunfish in Maori Bay while diving the BOS, and Clare chased it (unsuccessfully), filming this dodgy video. Even though the fish is moving its fins at such a leisurely pace, it’s powering through the water. We had beautiful conditions above and below the water, with surprising 15 degree temperatures, and enjoyed our unseasonal Atlantic jaunt.
Loryn descending at Duiker Island
This weekend
We have not had good weekend weather for quite a few weeks this winter, so it’s great to see another warm, windless weekend coming up. We plan to visit some of False Bay’s beautiful reefs, colourful and bursting with life. Atlantis has a couple of shallow pinnacles and a jumble of rocks and pillars that drop down to 27 metres on the sand, if you feel like a deep dive. It’s also perfectly suitable for Open Water divers. We will also do a wreck dive to the SAS Pietermaritzburg on Sunday. This special ship participated in the D-Day landings at Normandy during World War II.
Whale watching trip
We are planning to do a boat based whale watching trip in False Bay with Dave Hurwitz of Simon’s Town Boat Company one weekend in September or early October, depending on availability. Dave is licensed to approach whales to within a few tens of metres, whereas the rest of us mortals must stay 300 metres away from them unless they surface or approach near us, and even then we have to move away as soon as possible.
We did this trip last year and it was a wonderful experience. There is nothing quite like being close enough to a whale to hear it breathe. If you’d like to come along, please let me know before the end of this week, so that we can include you in the planning. The trip is R850 for adults and lasts several hours. For an idea of recent whale activity, check out the Boat Company facebook page.
Punishment
Occasionally divers on our boat will refer to certain items of dive gear as flippers and goggles. This drives me nuts and for a long time I have wondered about a cure. I have one now. All divers will be required to have a credit card on board. Spot fines, or liquid punishment as I would like to call them, will then be issued for transgressions. These can vary wildly but the minor issues such as flipper will carry less of a fine than harsher offences such as requests to “open my oxygen” or “turn me on”. We can also fine the first person to say they are “cold” or “I was sweating underwater”, or uses the word “toasty”. These payments can be made instantly as we now have a credit card machine on the boat.
Weekly nags
You need your MPA permit if you come for a dive in False Bay. I have temporary permits available but it’s much more cost effective to go to the post office and get one that’s valid for a year. Regardless of where we go, you should ideally have a surface marker buoy (SMB) and know how to deploy it, or dive with someone who does (preferably the former).
The weekend does not look all that rosy. A rather large swell is forecast and a little rain for tomorrow and Saturday, and then a fair amount of south easter for Sunday, but it blows later in the day so this is the plan:
All launches will be from False Bay Yacht Club. As usual, text me if you want to dive. We have Advanced students for Saturday and need to start early on Sunday as the wind picks up after lunch. These launches are subject to a final call early on the day as the swell may or may not affect us. It is always a sign of bad weather to come when big boats seek shelter in False Bay; at present two large ships have come into the bay, presumably to hide from the wind and swell.
Recent dives
Variable dorid at Pyramid Rock
We have had a good run of late and last weekend we were out on the boat on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. The weather was not nearly as bad as the forecast so we had some good diving, as well as encountering a large number of extremely frisky whales. It was also good to see some new and old faces on the boat. The viz was not spectacular, but there was not too much wind or swell. Today we had 4-5 metre visibility at Long Beach.
Octopus at Pyramid Rock
We had really good mileage out of the white shark encounter two weeks ago and were fortunate to have the story run on a few local blogs, from which the Sunday Times got hold of it, and that led to a short radio interview on Cape Talk on Monday morning. That kind of exposure doesn’t come around very often, so thank you False Bay, Christo, Craig, the Russians and of course the shark. If you haven’t heard what happened, click here.
Two red sponge nudibranchs at Spaniard Rock
There are two red sponge nudibranchs in the photo above. See if you can see them: a bigger one just above the snail, and a smaller one to the right of the image. They are perfectly camouflaged!
Dates to diarise
The next ScubaPro Day is on Saturday 26 October. On that day we will be spending some time in airports on our way back from the Red Sea, so unfortunately our boat won’t be participating. If you’re keen to do some cheap boat dives and maybe try out some ScubaPro gear, however, diarise the date. More information will be provided in the next few weeks.
The next Cape Town Dive Festival is on 2-3 May 2014. More information on that will be revealed in the coming months, I imagine.
It’s winter so not as many people dive as they do in summer, but the week’s diving has been good with little or no swell and clean water at around 15 degrees. We had lovely conditions at the infrequently-dived wreck of the Brunswicklast Saturday, before the rain came, and equally good conditions at Long Beach yesterday. There are some photos on facebook here and here. If you haven’t liked our facebook page already, please do – you can keep up to date with what we’re up to. We post photos regularly and try to do a visibility report whenever we dive.
Fish and box jellies at Long Beach
For once the weekend weather and dive plan is an easy call. Both days look exceptionally good and the bay is quite clean and calm right now. We are attending the DAN Cape Town event on Saturday so there will be no diving, but we will launch on Sunday to do qualifying dives for Open Water students. We will launch from the Yacht Club in Simon’s Town and the plan will be to visit Photographer’s Reef and the cowsharks.
Anemone on the Brunswick
Please remember your MPA permits. If you plan to come diving, check that yours is valid. If you don’t have one (or if it’s expired), head down to the post office with your ID book and about R100 and ask for a “scuba diving permit”. We dive a lot inside the marine protected area, for which you need a permit.
Wreckage of the Brunswick
Our Red Sea trip is in October (17-26th). There are still one or two spaces on the liveaboard if you feel like a last minute (almost) holiday, but it’s almost full. We’ll do a local trip (to Sodwana or Durban) again in the new year so don’t worry if you miss out!
We had pretty good conditions last weekend and did two dives at Long Beach on Saturday and two launches on Sunday. We had 4-6 metres visibility at Photographer’s Reef and about the same at Shark Alley. The sevengill cowsharks are scarce right now with very few sightings.
Octopus at Photographer’s Reef
This weekend
The weekend weather does not look altogether bad but there are a couple of events that may slow you down in getting to the dive sites:
Saturday: a cycling event from Simon’s Town station over Red Hill, around to Cape Point and back to Simon’s Town station – repeated several times over throughout the course of the day. Participants raise sponsorship for however many laps they do.
Sunday: the Big Walk… there is a walk starting at 9am at Long Beach. Road closures shouldn’t be a big problem – just Fish Hoek main road to Muizenberg, and the Long Beach parking lot will be a bit crowded.
I won’t launch this weekend as I have students. We will be at the pool on Saturday doing Open Water and Rescue and will do the same on Sunday at Long Beach.
Baby klipfish at Long Beach
We attended a talk at the Fish Hoek library this evening on the Glencairn Barge, believed to have sunk in 1978. It appears no-one really knows its history! The speaker was from Underwater Surveys and showed some fascinating images of wrecks scanned using their very advanced (and expensive) downscan imaging system.
The long weekend and the Cape Town Dive Festival is upon us so given the length of the week we decided on a quick newsletter that would arrive in your mailbox earlier than usual.
Cape Town Dive Festival
The weather forecast for the weekend is a hot topic right now and changes from awful to okay and back to dodgy at every update. Given the recent inaccuracies we have all experienced with the forecasts, we are hoping for good – or at least decent – weather.
Shy little klipfish on the SAS Pietermaritzburg
You should all have received a confirmation email with all the relevant info about the festival (if you’re attending) so I won’t cover all that again other than to remind you to bring your dive certification card and MPA permit to registration. There is very poor cell phone reception in the area so qualifications cannot be verified online.
If you have a gear requirement from me please let me know ASAP what to bring for you.
Last weekend’s diving
Another little klipfish on the Pietermaritzburg
We dived the SAS Pietermaritzburg on Saturday as we wanted to get some photos of its current state as there are plans under way to have the wreck protected as a heritage site. This normally only applies after 60 years but salvors have been removing parts of the wreck and it is felt by the diving community, other interested parties and the naval community that it should be left alone. It is claimed that the wreck has not been affected but the salvor himself has admitted to removing up to 20 tonnes of metal from on and near the wreck.
Weekend diving
Thursday being a holiday, plus a promise of sun all day we plan to launch at 10 and 12 or alternatively do a double tank dive to avoid the wind that comes in the afternoon. I am keen to dive the cave area of Batsata Maze and to explore a section of the Smits cliffs.
Divers descending onto the SAS Pietermaritzburg
Friday and Saturday we will be at the Dive Festival.
We may also launch on Sunday, depending on the conditions and the fullness of our cylinders. I’ll notify you by text message if you’re a regular boat diver with me, and if you’re not but would like to be informed of prospective launches, please drop me an email or send me a text to express interest.
Positioned at the end of the Twelve Apostles mountain range (and thusly named), 13th Apostle reef is a distinct mass of granite boulders surrounded by a sandy bottom. Waves have long been observed to break here in bad weather, but the reef was only dived for the first time late in 2010. It’s quite a long (13.3km) boat ride from Hout Bay, near Llandudno.
Hydroids, urchins and soft corals
We visited it on a day when surface conditions were somewhat choppy despite the lack of wind, and the boat ride there felt endless. And wet. Visibility, however, was stellar – when my buddy failed to arrive at the bottom I was forced to resurface, and on my way back down I could see Tony and Vanessa 15 metres below me. They, in turn, could see my legs and the boat while I was on the surface.
Tony & Vanessa, seen from near the surface
The top of the reef is between 6 and 10 metres deep, punctuated by deep cracks. There are in fact a couple of swimthroughs and overhangs, one of which forms a very large cavern. The reef itself has kelp growing on top and down to at least 15 metres which, as Peter Southwoodpoints out, implies that light often penetrates to that depth, in turn implying frequent good visibility at the site. There is the usual covering of urchins, sea cucumbers, sea squirts, sponges, soft corals and hydroids.
Alikreukel (I think)
Klipfish hiding in red seaweed
Super klipfish
Cauliflower soft coral
Blue gas flame nudibranch
Red fanworms
Hydroids cover the rocks in places
Basket star tentacles
Scores of fry
Tony found me a beautiful basket star, and I discovered a brooding cushion star – an unusual sea star that makes me crave refined carbohydrates. We also saw large numbers of west coast rock lobster and schools of hottentot. Parts of the reef were covered by dense schools of baby fish – the Atlantic is very fecund.
Basket star
This reef has a distinct edge, and while it’s quite large, if you land on it you probably won’t get lost. It feels quite far out to sea (it isn’t, really) and it’s essential (as with all Cape Town boat diving) to have an SMB to deploy before you surface. Tony in fact sent his up with me when I ascended early in the dive to look for my buddy. I descended on the line and found him and Vanessa at the bottom.
On Sunday 11 March, since the Cape Argus Pick n Pay Cycle Tour was going to prohibit access to basically the entire peninsula, we decided to take an expedition out to the eastern side of False Bay to do a boat dive with Indigo Scuba, run by Kate and Deon Jonker. We’ve been meaning to do this for ages and ages, so we were very glad to finally get ourselves over there! The southeaster (which had blown strongly in the few days prior to the 11th) actually cleans up the eastern side of False Bay while it messes up the western side, or at least has some positive effect on visibility. So while we are diving in the Atlantic during the summer, Indigo launches out of Gordon’s Bay and explores local dive sites such as Pinnacles, Cow and Calf, and the Steenbras River Mouth.
Deon Jonker skippering the Indigo Scuba dive boat
We met at Indigo Scuba in the morning, loaded up the boat, and then drove the 5 minutes to Harbour Island in Gordon’s Bay, from where we launched. It’s an extremely civilised launch site and overall experience… The foul-mouthed snoek slinging fishermen crowding Miller’s Point seemed like a bad dream!
West coast rock lobster buddy pair
It’s about 11 kilometres from Harbour Island to Steenbras Deep, and one has the feeling of being quite far out to sea – although we could see the mountains surrounding False Bay on both sides of us. The wind was stronger than the weather man had predicted, giving rise to some quite serious wind chop and a bumpy and wet boat ride. When we arrived at the reef we could see that there was more wave action on top of the pinnacles than in the deeper water surrounding them. Deon dropped a shot on one of the two pinnacles that comprise the reef (the top of the pinnacle we dropped onto is at about 18 metres, with the sand at about 30 metres). A murky descent (standard for False Bay in summer!) down the shot line led us to the top of the pinnacle, where visibility was only about 2 metres and it was very green.
Bull klipfish
As we ventured slightly deeper we encountered some invigorating (ahem!) thermoclines (one of them was actually visible as a haze in the water) and improved visibility. There was quite a strong current in places, and lots of surge.
Yellow choirboys ascidian
Orange gas flame nudibranch
Frilled nudibranch
Congregation of frilled nudibranchs
Granular sea star
Silvertip nudibranch
There are many similarities between the reefs we dive on the western side of False Bay, but the overall pattern of the sea life was subtly different. The fish seemed far less skittish than their compatriots to the west, and happily swam within a few tens of centimetres from my mask. Nudibranchs abound, and close inspection of the corals covering the rocks is well rewarded. There seemed to be fewer sea cucumbers, and feather stars were not quite as dominant as they are in some of the other parts of False Bay. The corals, sponges and sea fans are beautiful and very numerous.
The sand around the reef is very coarse and full of shells, and the reef itself abounds with cracks, gullies, small pointy pinnacles, and walls that can be traversed at a variety of depths. The gullies appear to be much beloved by west coast rock lobster, and shysharks were quite common too.
Puffadder shyshark and some lobster friends
West coast rock lobster
Large west coast rock lobster
This reef is not in a marine protected area (MPA) – none of the eastern False Bay dive sites are. Kate, who regularly dives both sides of the bay, says she can see a distinct difference in the number of fish that they see on “their” side of the bay compared to the western side. So even if I am quite cynical about the competence of the administration and will to police the MPAs, clearly they are having some effect!
Sandy Cove is a beautiful little bay that serves as the entry point for a number of the dive sites at Oudekraal, as well as being quite a pleasant dive in its own right. It is located just north of the Twelve Apostles Hotel, and access to the site is down a steep slope from the road. There is a small sign on the roadside, and the path starts around about there. If you drive past the site on a weekend in summer, you’ll see numerous divers’ cars parked in the yellow line as the traffic whizzes by. This, and the fairly steep climb (which is actually no worse than the one at Shark Alley) are the major negatives of diving here.
Tony descending
Swimming through the kelp
Tony filming the school of hottentot
Kelp forest in Sandy Cove
Bernita in Sandy Cove
Bernita enjoying the nice visibility
The path down from the road takes three branches. The first is to Justin’s Caves, the second leads to quite a difficult entry point to Sand Cove, over a boulder beach between large granite boulders, and the third – which is the longest – leads to a small sand beach with convenient resting places that provides the easiest entry at this site.
Tony in the kelp
The cove itself is ringed by kelp forests, with a sandy patch in the middle. The depth is only four to five metres inside the cove, and it’s sheltered enough that it could be used for confined water skills training. The anchor of the Het Huis Te Kraaiestein, a very old wooden wreck that lies just outside the cove, is located on the fringe of the cove closest to the road.
Tiny klipfish on a rock in Sandy Cove
The other dive sites that can be reached via Sandy Cove are Geldkis, Strawberry Rocks, Mushroom Pinnacle, and Geldkis Blinder. You could also swim around to Justin’s Caves from here, but it’s not the shortest route. Negotiating the kelp forest can be a bit tricky, but there are sufficient distinctively shaped rocks and granite formations that with a bit of practice navigation will come quite naturally.
Bernita in some nice visiblity at Oudekraal on Christmas day
The last week or so has been quite hectic with lots of diving being done. On Christmas day Clare and I (having discharged our family responsibilities the day before) did a lovely shore entry at Oudekraal in the company of Bernita. We had the entire ocean to ourselves and felt rather privileged.
Kelp on the Maori
The wreck of the Maori
Porthole on the Maori
Part of the Maori’s varied cargo
Brooding cushion star on the Maori
Gerard, Maurice, Keith, Angela, Tony and Clare in Hout Bay
Several of us enjoyed a pair of stunning boat dives in the Atlantic on Wednesday, and in between I’ve been shore diving and in the pool with Open Water students. Tomorrow I am starting a Rescue course and a Nitrox Specialty, as well as continuing with Open Water students. I also have Advanced students on the go so every day the weather permits, I am diving.
Tony and Angela descend onto the Maori
I won’t be on the boat this weekend, but Grant is launching and if you feel like a boat dive contact him directly (and fast). Conditions on the Atlantic side look quite good, but next week will most likely deteriorate somewhat with a large swell… Just in time for everyone to go back to work!
Seal on the Aster
Santa diving the Aster
Klipfish on the Aster
I wish all of you a safe long weekend and a peaceful and prosperous 2012. Hope to see you in the water soon!
