Plants

Newsletter: Chin up

Hi divers

Weekend dive plans

No diving

This is a strange time to be alive, and we are all (hopefully) adjusting to being confined to our homes for the next 21 and perhaps more days. This is a challenge, as I don’t need to tell you. Thankfully there are ways to pass the time, whilst not forgetting about the ocean and scuba diving, and I thought I’d share a few of them with you.

Interesting gaps between the rocks and in the kelp are fun for divers!

Free online first aid courses from DAN

DAN Southern Africa has generously made their catalogue of online first aid courses free of charge for the next one month. Pick from the list below:

(Rocking back and forth on your couch contemplating existence and eating popcorn is also ok – don’t feel obliged to try to transform yourself into an intellectual and physical hulk during lockdown.)

Marine Life Identification with Georgina Jones

The City iNaturalist Challenge is rolling around again at the end of April. Georgina’s planned fish ID workshops probably aren’t going to happen in the originally planned face to face format, so she’s preparing daily online posts with information (and photos) on common marine life around Cape Town. You can find these in the Underwater Cape Town facebook group, which you should join if you’re not already a member. Georgina knows what she’s talking about.

The Sea-Change book

We reviewed the incredible Sea Change book a while ago. During the lockdown period, the Sea Change team is making the e-book available free of charge to South Africans. All you need to do is send an email to get a special download code for the Sea Change website. Details here (facebook – may be slow to load thanks to a broken undersea cable).

This is a beautiful offer; you’ll be able to explore the kelp forests from the comfort of your couch, as long as this goes on.

For the kids

Audible is allowing free streaming of a large catalogue of kids’, teens’ and classic books read by awesome narrators: check out stories.audible.com.

Local illustrator Patrick Latimer has created Halfsies, a free print-it-yourself pdf of pictures for kids (or you) to complete, and then colour. Find it here.

Virus information

Much less wonderfully, we’re sure you already know about several of these, but here’s a list of reputable sources for coronavirus updates:

The SA Government’s coronavirus website
The Financial Times has free coronavirus coverage, including this incredible graphical global tracker
Africa Check and Snopes, for myth busting

Finally, to all of you and your families, please do your utmost to stay well, stay at home, and see you on the other side. To the healthcare workers – we cannot thank you enough.

regards

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog/

Diving is addictive!

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Newsletter: Guests from the south

Hi divers

Weekend dive plans

Sunday: Boat dives from False Bay Yacht Club

Sunday will most likely be the better diving day in False Bay despite the swell forecast. The Atlantic temperature has dropped 5 degrees in the last 24 hours so there is a chance that Oudekraal would work on Saturday if you need to get wet.

I will plan launching from Simons Town, early on Sunday and both dives will be in the vicinity of Roman Rock. Let me know if you’re keen.

Flagellar sea fan at Roman Rock (and very respectable visibility)

Penguin at large

There’s a king penguin currently visiting Buffels Bay in the Cape Point Nature Reserve. These animals are found on the subantarctic islands and the Antarctic continent, so it’s a long way from home. This is a rare chance for you to see the second largest species of penguin.

They aren’t rare (there are 2-3 million of them in the world), but they are highly threatened by climate change, and we’re very lucky to see one in Africa. This bird has no fear of humans, so be cautious and respectful if you go and see it. SANParks is guarding the animal to make sure it’s kept safe.

regards

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog/

Diving is addictive!

To subscribe to receive this newsletter by email, use the form on this page!

Bookshelf: Beachcombing in South Africa

Beachcombing in South Africa – Rudy van der Elst

Why so quiet? What have we been doing? Working, mostly. Trying to stay alive. And a bit of reading, and some beachcombing. Enter this is marvellous little book from fish fundi Rudy van der Elst (A Field Guide to the Common Sea Fishes of South Africa).

Chapter by chapter, van der Elst describes the types of debris that one might find on a beach. After a brief orientation chapter covering the ocean current regime around South Africa, relevant regulations, safety, beach ecology, tides, pollution and more, we launch into a tour of washed-up treasures.

Predictably, many of the items to be found are organic in nature – plants, invertebrates of various types, eggs and egg cases, fishes, birds, and shells. There are also items such as oceanographic devices, tags from marine animals, fishing equipment, cyalumes, buoys – some of these (such as tags) should be returned to their owners, and others should be removed from the vicinity of the ocean (such as discarded fishing nets and lines).

The chapter on marine animals (resting, nesting and stranded) is exceptionally useful and it is almost for this alone that I’d like to put a copy of this book in every home in every coastal town in the country. Seals, whales, turtles and seabirds can end up on the beach, sometimes in difficulty and at other times not. It can be hard to tell, and well-meaning members of the public can unwittingly cause great harm while trying to assist. A list of useful contacts in this regard appears at the end of the book, such as the Two Oceans Aquarium and the SPCA (region-specific).

The final two chapters cover miscellaneous “treasures” such as fossilised sharks teeth, sea glass, logs, and actual treasure, as well as beachcombing through the ages in South Africa. Here we learn about tidal fish traps, coastal caves, and other historical coastal dwellers who made their living from the sea.

We’ve found some awesome things on the beach, from shipwrecks to goose barnacles to rare crabs. Beachcombing is an accessible hobby that requires nothing but time, observation skills, curiosity, and a beach to stroll on.

This is a beautifully illustrated, comprehensive little volume that deserves to come with you on your beach holiday. It’ll prompt more careful examination of the flotsam and jetsam on your local beach, and, probably, more early morning low-tide visits to find the best pickings!

Wild Card magazine featured this book when it was published. Get it online here if you’re in South Africa, or here for your Kindle.

Bookshelf: Seaweed Chronicles

Seaweed Chronicles: A World at the Water’s Edge – Susan Hand Shetterly

This is one of the best kinds of popular science book. It reads so easily that by the time you’ve absorbed enough material to attain a diploma in phycology (the study of seaweed), you also feel as though you’ve met and befriended a varied cast of individuals whose lives revolve – in various ways – around slippery marine algae.

It’s written by an American author, and the book centres squarely on the coast of Maine in the United States, obviously much loved by the author. It’s not clear initially that the geographical focus of the book is so narrow; some readers may want to know this in advance. While reading, I was grateful for the perspective that a Veld and Sea seaweed foraging course gave me on our local seaweeds.

Vignettes of seaweed-centred lives, from foragers turned businesspeople, to scientists, to shepherds whose flocks feast on seaweed during their coastal sojourns, introduce us to a cast of characters illustrating the many uses and commercial possibilities of seaweed, as well as the management and conservation challenges associated with its harvest. Seaweeds are pivotal in coastal ecosystems, providing vital habitat and sustenance. This isn’t just a science book (which some may find frustrating). It’s as much about the people as about the seaweed – but you will learn some science from it!

There’s a good review here at the New York Journal of Books.

Get the book here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here.

Bookshelf: Sea Change

Sea Change: Primal Joy and the Art of Underwater Tracking – Craig Foster & Ross Frylinck

The Sea Change project may be familiar to you from their large format photographic displays, one of which was for a time along the promenade in Sea Point, and is currently in Lamberts Bay. You may have read about the project, or seen its members – ocean-loving filmmakers, journalists, scientists – diving in the cold water of False Bay year round, without wetsuits. You may even have seen the BBC’s Blue Planet II series, in which the filmmakers, guided by Craig Foster and his fellows, captured an incredible octopus sequence filmed on our doorstep in False Bay.

The Sea-Change book has been a long time in the making, and is the product of hours upon hours upon hours spent in the water, observing the animals that call the kelp forests home. The book contains a story of loss and discovery – that of Ross Frylinck – interwoven with large-format photographs of scenes from the kelp forest, taken by filmmaker and naturalist Craig Foster, a co-founder of the Sea-Change project. Foster also provides the captions.

As a diver, it was immediately clear to me that a great deal of patience and close observation was required to gain the deep understanding that Foster has of the smallest creatures living among the kelp. There is no substitute for time in the water. There is no substitute for swimming slowly, deliberately, and for spending extended time looking at one place. The marks that animals leave on rocks, kelp stipes, the sand, and even on each other’s shells, can tell a story.

I learned a huge amount about animal behaviour from this book, and about the interconnectedness of all the elements of the watery, beautiful world around the Cape Peninsula. The photographs are beautiful and striking, capturing moments that one would be extremely lucky to see during the normal course of things. Diving for more than an hour a day, every day of the year, however, makes such things more commonplace.

Sea Change presents a beautiful opportunity for the wider community of ocean lovers to learn from the unique approach taken by the Sea-Change team (this article gives a good sense of it), and to learn how to understand and observe the animals that surround us when we look beneath the surface of the inshore kelp forests. The project also has something to say about how science happens, and the vital connection between science and storytelling. Identifying animals is fun, but – as any veteran twitcher will tell you – the next level is understanding behaviour. This is a challenge I’m happy to take up.

Get a copy here, or directly from the Sea Change team.

Weekend dive plans

Free online first aid courses from DAN

Marine Life Identification with Georgina Jones

The Sea-Change book

For the kids

Virus information

Weekend dive plans

Penguin at large

Weekend dive plans

Beachcombing in South Africa – Rudy van der Elst

Seaweed Chronicles: A World at the Water’s Edge – Susan Hand Shetterly

Sea Change: Primal Joy and the Art of Underwater Tracking – Craig Foster & Ross Frylinck

Weekend dive plans

Kelp night

Camera housing

Weekend dive plans

Weekend dive plans

Weekend dive plans