I’ve got students in the pool on Saturday, and Sunday looks too windy for dives, so we’ll have to wait to get in some salt water until conditions improve.
Turtle time
It’s the start of that time of year when turtles strand on the beaches of the Western Cape. What to do if you find one? Don’t throw it back into the sea. The Two Oceans Aquarium explains how you should proceed. Read more here.
Sunday: Shore dives from Long Beach in Simons Town
The Kakapo on Long Beach, Kommetjie
Thanks to the south easter, the Atlantic is getting cleaner. Hout Bay is still a little grubby, but there are two days of strong south easterly wind to fix it before Sunday. The temperature is already down to 12 degrees.
Sunday will most likely be the best bet for dives, out of Hout Bay or Granger Bay. The swell, however, is bigger that my boat likes, so we will shore dive in Simons Town on Sunday instead. Let me know if you’re keen.
I’m shore diving students on Saturday morning at Long Beach, starting crisply with the dawn (ok, close enough). There’s a good gap in the wind, but to take advantage we need to be up with the birds.
Olifantsbos at Cape Point
Beach clean and Trash Bash
Two for your diaries:
The Beach Co-Op’s first new moon clean at Surfers Corner is this Saturday at 9.00am – details here
The Two Oceans Aquarium’s first Trash Bash of the year is at Rondevlei Nature Reserve the following Saturday, 1 February – details here. Maybe we’ll see a hippo…
Ok, so it’s not quite a hurricane, but the weather man has dipped heavily into the pink and purple hues in his box of crayons for this week and weekend’s forecasts. Things calm down on Tuesday, but in the mean time, hold onto your hats.
It’s far too rough for diving, unfortunately, so we’ll sit this weekend out. If you’re free for weekday dives, let me know, because I’ll be going out next week.
Hope you’re all settling into 2020 and feeling strong.
The good diving weather window this weekend is short: Saturday morning, and Long Beach is probably the best bang for your buck. I’m booked up on Saturday, but if you must dive, that’s your best option.
No diving The weekend is too windy for good diving, with strong south easterly winds starting on Friday evening. We won’t be diving, but I’ve got a boat launch tomorrow and I’ll share the conditions on facebook.
Jellies at the aquarium in Dubai Mall
Worth your time
New Moon beach clean
This Saturday at 9am is the monthly new moon beach cleanup at Surfers Corner, run by The Beach Co-Op. Event details (facebook) here.
Shark Night
As part of this year’s Shark and Ray Symposium, there’s a public event on Tuesday 8 October at the Two Oceans Aquarium that’s ALL ABOUT SHARKS. Looks awesome. Get more info and tickets here.
Talking Trash
As part of First Thursdays, on the evening of 3 October there will be a series of short talks about how waste is managed in Cape Town, the social, environmental and economic impacts of waste, and some strategies Capetonians can implement to better assist the City of Cape Town in its sustainability and resilience journey. The event is in central town, and is just one hour long. Find details here.
We won’t be diving this weekend, and there won’t be a newsletter (or diving) next week, but we’ll be back in business after the public holiday on Heritage Day (24 September). This weekend, Saturday looks good, and Sunday ok for diving.
I launched for divers on Tuesday, and they had fairly good conditions (5-6 metre visibility at Sherwood Forest and Castle Pinnacles) but the surface conditions deteriorated as the day progressed and the wind picked up.
Bioluminescence at Fish Hoek beach
This past weekend, helped by the south easter and then the heat, a thick red tide got caught in Fish Hoek bay and as a result we were treated to some incredible bioluminescence (caused by a type of plankton that fluoresces when disturbed by wave action) on Saturday evening.
This occurs at least a couple of times a year, usually in spring and autumn, on this side of False Bay (and it often makes its way around to the Kogel Bay area on the eastern shore). It is an incredible sight to see. There’s a little video here (pardon the screaming – the beach was packed and the people were excited).
The tree in our driveway has a tiny green bud containing a new leaf. Despite the cold this week, I declare spring.
False Bay is quite surgy after some large swell this week, but I hope it’ll have settled down enough by Sunday for some reasonable diving. I’ll only make the call on Saturday afternoon; please let me know if you’d like to be notified of any developing plans.
Table Mountain from Rietvlei Nature Reserve
Beach cleanups
There are at least two happening this weekend:
The regular new moon beach cleanup at Surfers Corner, Muizenberg beach, organised by The Beach Co-Op (info on facebook) on Saturday at 9am
There’s a fascinating update this week from Shark Spotters on False Bay’s white sharks (spoiler: they’re awol but we’re not quite certain why yet) – read more here.
I had to write a short article about Shark Spotters a while ago, for the quarterly magazine of the company I work for. It was fun to write within the constraints of quite a punitive word count, and to try and emphasise the aspects of the program that I think are poorly understood by the public. Here’s the article:
Shark Spotters developed into Cape Town’s primary shark safety strategy out of two similar, informal initiatives. At Muizenberg and Fish Hoek in 2004, surfers arranged with lifeguards, car guards and trek fishermen to warn them when sharks were sighted. Today, Shark Spotters is a NPO funded primarily by the City of Cape Town, Save Our Seas Foundation, and public donations. It operates year-round at four beaches and during summer at another four. These are beaches that have both many water users and relatively common shark sightings.
A team of 30 spotters equipped with binoculars, polarising sunglasses and all-weather gear watch from the mountainside, and when a shark is sighted they notify colleagues at the beach to sound a siren and raise the appropriate flag. The flags indicate the current or recent presence of a shark, that spotting conditions are poor, or that it is safe to swim.
The spotters, all drawn from local communities, are trained in safety, first aid and shark behaviour. A further 10 team members deploy and retrieve the shark exclusion net at Fish Hoek beach during summer. Unlike the gill nets protecting beaches in KwaZulu Natal, this net does not catch sharks. It provides a physical barrier between sharks and swimmers. It is designed to be retrieved at the end of the day, or, to prevent entanglement, when there are marine mammals nearby. The Fish Hoek shark exclusion net is unique worldwide as an environmentally friendly shark attack mitigation measure.
It is the combination of favourable topography and surface-swimming sharks that makes Shark Spotters’ work possible and effective. The land around many of Cape Town’s beaches slopes steeply towards the sea, providing raised vantage points from which to spot. The sharks which pose the primary danger to water users, because of their size and curious natures, are great white sharks. Fortunately these sharks spend much time swimming on the surface, and their distinctive swimming style is readily recognisable.
Shark Spotters also conducts research on sharks to improve safety measures and provide management and conservation recommendations. As a result, the movements of great white sharks in False Bay are well understood. Sharks visit the beaches year-round, but with a distinct seasonal pattern. During winter the sharks congregate at Seal Island to feed on juvenile seals. During summer, sharks head for the backline of Cape Town’s beaches – probably to feed on the fish species found in False Bay at this time, and to rest in the highly oxygenated water close to shore. This is when they pose the greatest risk to water users.
Why support Shark Spotters?
I love the fact that Shark Spotters combines care for people with concern for the environment. The program takes a scientific stance backed by research, and has attracted worldwide recognition. It also provides training and employment for 40 residents of some of Cape Town’s most impoverished communities. I sit on the non-executive committee as a representative of Cape Town’s scuba diving community, and it’s a privilege to work with fellow water users and ocean lovers, and hopefully to provide a benefit to the greater community through our small contribution.
(Of course, lately white shark movements in False Bay are slightly less well understood than they have been, probably thanks to a pair of orcas whose irregular visits to Seal Island and Millers Point to hunt white sharks and sevengills seem to clear out the neighbourhood a bit! Fear not, Shark Spotters’ research is aiming to understand these changes, too.)
