SURG – Page 3 – Learn to Dive Today Blog

Sea life: Klipfish

I find klipfish the most frustrating creatures to identify – they come in a bewildering array of colours and patterns, and I am waiting impatiently for Guido Zsilavecz of SURG‘s book on klipfish to be completed!

Klipfish are lazy swimmers, and green and brown ones are usually seen very well camouflaged among fronds of sea lettuce or kelp. They tend to move in exactly the same way as the seaweed, allowing themselves to be pushed around by the surge, which makes them hard to spot.

There are also the more colourful variety – busy purple patterns being the most common – who hide themselves where there’s a lot of coraline algae and other purple seaweed growth. While they tend to spend most of their time curled lazily against the side of rocks or on the pipeline, they can swim away with startling speed when they feel nervous.

These fish usually seem to be solitary, but Tony and I saw a pair of them fighting – we think – at Long Beach a week or two ago. Since they seem fairly territorial, that may have been the source of the dispute. Whatever they were doing, it was the first time we’ve seen more than one of these fish in the same place, let alone interacting.

On Saturday I met a klipfish at Long Beach who was incredibly tame. He submitted to (and seemed to enjoy) having his chin tickled, head butted my mask a few times, and nibbled at my bubbles after trying to swim into by BC. I was interacting with him while Tony was doing the CESA skill with a student, and it was wonderful. Feeling that the fish are noticing you, rather than just swimming past oblivious (or hiding in panic), is very special.

Here’s an extremely dodgy video (the sea lettuce was somewhat annoying) of me and Corné (with the orange SMB) having some quality klipfish time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f4OV41unEc&w=540]

Sea life: Giant short tailed sting ray

This morning Tony had students at Long Beach and I tagged along. We swam out for depth, and in about 7.5 metres of water – brittlestar country – we found this absolute beauty resting on the sand. Can you see what it is?

Tony and Kate have seen two rays so far this week – one in the wreckage on the Clan Stuart, and another near the yellow buoy at Long Beach. This one was further north, in fairly deep water. It let me film it for a while, and then got annoyed at my heavy (somewhat excited) breathing and left.

We generally see the rays starting in late October to early November – basking in the sand at Long Beach, and even hanging about in the shallow water near the slipway at Miller’s Point. It’s a fantastic experience to spot one.

: Spiny tail

According to Georgina’s book, these rays give birth to live young, about 40 centimetres across, and grow to about 2 metres across. The specimen we saw was at least 1.5 metres across. The young are born folded up like crepes, and unfold their wings as they enter the water. Short tail sting rays are thought to feed on sand-dwelling invertebrates, grinding up shells to get at the creatures inside. It must take a LOT of eating to keep a body that size going!

When our ray left, he stirred up a huge cloud of sand and then swam so low over Kate’s head that she had to lift her hand up to fend him off. I guess we can add rays to the list of creatures who don’t give way to divers!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGQmoTXLlG8]

The Two Oceans Aquarium housed a gorgeous giant short tailed sting ray called Olive, who passed away recently. She was magnificent, and loved to swim up the glass in the I&J Predator Exhibit where she was housed.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmnRUGDwDhs&w=540]

Why I teach PADI

I do not profess to having much insight into how other certifying agencies equip their Instructors but I do know how PADI does.

As PADI Instructors we are kept up to date with the latest training information quarterly, and we receive an up dated Instructor’s Manual every year with all changes, alterations and additions to the curriculum. We attend forums where we are given the latest info, what’s new for the year, statistics and on the PADI Pro website there is a host of white paper topics relating to marketing, training and PADI programs, and an endless supply of diving related indemnity forms etc. For every program there is an underwater slate, detailing the requirements for each dive. PADI do ensure that we, as instructors have every bit of information available.

For every program, training course or any aspect of your diving business PADI has made all the info readily available for Instructors. PADI also continues to evolve an often leads the way in improving the training courses.

For example, the PADI Open Water course training materials – crew pack as we commonly know it – originally contained a manual and a dive tables. Today it also contains an electronic dive planner, your own set of DVDs, an amazing log book for all your courses (Open Water, Advanced, Rescue, Specialty courses, and forty odd fun dives), plus loads of information on specialties, and a booklet giving you some insight on the diving options you have. All this in addition to the manual!

Learning to dive in Cape Town with me at Learn to Dive Today means you also get a SURG slate on the common creatures we have here, plus free DAN diving medical cover for the duration of your Open Water course.

SURG Marine Animals of the Cape Peninsula slate

Bookshelf: More Reef Fishes & Nudibranchs

More Reef Fishes & Nudibranchs – Dennis King & Valda Fraser

This is the sequel to Dennis King’s first book on East and South Coast sea life, Reef Fishes and Corals. It has a similar layout and is of similar length and dimensions. It’s a useful size for travelling around with, like its predecessor.

Several more reef fish are shown and described here, filling in many of the gaps of the previous volume.

This volume doesn’t cover coral at all, but includes a section on nudibranchs. I’m afraid the SURG team have spoiled me for nudibranch identification, and the nudibranch section of this book frustrated me for several reasons.

It doesn’t provide common names for the nudibranchs – so I had to tell people I’d seen a Chromodoris hamiltoni (Tony called it a Colgate nudibranch because it looked like a squeeze of toothpaste). Also, there’s only one picture of each variety, which I suppose is to be expected in a book that attempts to cover a wide variety of fish and other marine species… But given the degree of variation within one type of nudibranch, it can be tricky to make a positive identification with only one photograph to go on.

Buy it here.

Bookshelf: Nudibranchs of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay

Nudibranchs of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay – Guido Zsilavecz

This is the second book by Guido Zsilavecz and the third Southern Underwater Research Group (SURG) publication. It’s all about nudibranchs, the little invertebrates of which we have a huge variety here in the Cape. They’re brilliantly coloured, but can be hard to spot. With practice I am learning where to look for them!

Each type of nudibranch is illustrated with four photographs, which is useful as there is some variation even among multiple nudibranchs of the same type. The photographs are labelled with the name of the dive site at which they were taken, which is very useful as it gives one an idea of where to look for the little critters.

Sometimes they are photographed with their egg ribbons – I often see coils of eggs at Long Beach, but have never been lucky enough to spot the smug nudibranch next to her handiwork.

Tony has an enormous book that covers nudibranchs the world over, but I prefer this volume because it’s focused on the geographical region in which I do most of my diving. It’s also of very manageable dimensions in terms of how many different nudibranchs are covered. New species are being discovered all the time, so if you spot and photograph one that looks unfamiliar, the good folks at SURG will be very happy to examine your photo and try to identify (or, even cooler, name) it for you.

You can purchase this book from SURG – there are order details on their website and they will post it to you directly. Otherwise it’s available in good dive shops in Cape Town.

Fish identification and conservation

Here are some useful web resources on identifying and conserving fish and marine life…

South Africa

Southern Underwater Research Group (SURG) – if you send them a picture of the creature you can’t identify, they will help! They have also published several books on identification of marine species.

The South African Saltwater and Offshore Fish Species List has a list of species, with information about some of them.

Global

Census of Marine Life – this project occasionally makes the news with the discovery of new species.

FishBase – incredibly comprehensive database search of fish species.

World Register of Marine Species (WORMS) aims to be the most authoritative list of marine species’ names ever published.

Project GloBAL assesses the impact of fisheries’ bycatch on populations of long-lived marine species such as turtles, seabirds and ocean mammals such as dolphins.

The International Whaling Commission attempts to provide for the proper conservation of whale stocks.

The Southwest Fisheries Science Center has a list of the species they monitor, plus good information, on their Species page.

Bookshelf: Coastal Fishes of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay

Coastal Fishes of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay – Guido Zsilavecz

Coastal Fishes - SURG — Published by the Southern Underwater Research Group (SURG)

This slim volume is another SURG publication, and is of the same high quality as Georgina Jones’s Marine Animals production. It’s only about fish – no invertebrates, no plants and no birds.

Like Georgina’s book, it only covers a very particular geographic area, which makes it a super reference for local divers. Given a big thick book on the whole of the South African coast, I am liable to identify ten species found only in KZN that I think I’ve seen on a False Bay dive… and then be sorely disappointed to realise how statistically improbable (but not necessarily impossible) that is!

The book is laid out nicely – the text is at the front, and all the photographs are at the back. So you can flip through the photos all in one go, figure out what you saw, and then read all about the species in the front of the book. The information is comprehensive and useful for divers – after a recent night dive, I used this book to confirm that we’d been surrounded by a shoal of juvenile maasbanker, based on the photographs and behavioural information included in the book.

There is information about which species have been seen at which Cape dive site, and where they are most common, which is fabulous. A dedicated reader could even figure out which species they are most likely to see on a dive at a particular location, with reference only to this book and Peter Southwood’s Wikivoyage site. This information, combined with knowledge of where the fish like to hide out, can enhance a dive a great deal. Instead of searching aimlessly, one can be more directed in where one looks for marine life.

Guido Zsilavecz, the author, has a particular interest in klipfish (last I heard he’s working on a book only about them, but I could be wrong), and devotes a number of pages to the different varieties. For someone like me, who sees hundreds of multicoloured klipfish but can never decide what kind they are, this is a godsend.

You can purchase this book from SURG – there are order details on their website and they will post it to you directly. Otherwise it’s available in good dive shops in Cape Town.

Bookshelf: A Field Guide to the Marine Animals of the Cape Peninsula

A Field Guide to the Marine Animals of the Cape Peninsula – Georgina Jones

This is the first (and can hold its own as the only) marine life book that I would recommend that a scuba diver in Cape Town purchases for their library of diving books. It’s focused on the marine animals you’ll find in False Bay and on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula – a fairly small geographic region, but one with upwards of 150 dive sites and with incredible biological diversity. (The second book I recommend to local divers is Two Oceans, which has a far broader geographical focus and is thus less useful to Capetonian divers.)

The author, Georgina Jones, is a diver herself, and a member of the Southern Under Water Research Group (SURG), which published this book. SURG aims to bridge the gap between recreational divers and the scientific community, and apart from several fantastic book publications, their website provides a forum for divers to submit photographs of marine life for the experts to identify. Sightings of strange and exotic creatures (many of them at Tony’s favourite Long Beach hangout) are listed, too – often creatures from warmer waters up north get washed into False Bay and are then spotted by lucky divers.

The book has a photograph of each organism, and a brief description of its size, habitat, behaviour and feeding habits. The creatures are photographed in their natural environments, so the colours are representative and the creatures are alive (I didn’t realise how important this was until I used Rudy van der Elst’s book).

Two Oceans covers sea plants, and devotes more space to crabs, molluscs and the like than this book does, but particularly for beginner divers this isn’t an issue at all. It takes quite a few hours in the water before one discovers the joy of hydroids!

You can purchase this book from SURG – there are order details on their website and they will post it to you directly. Otherwise it’s available in good dive shops in Cape Town.

Bookshelf: Two Oceans

Two Oceans: A Guide to the Marine Life of Southern Africa – George & Margo Branch et al

Two Oceans (original edition) — The original edition of G & M Branch's Two Oceans

Two Oceans is one of the better known guides to South African marine life, and rightly so. Tony is on his second copy – the first is so dog-eared that the covers have fallen off and the spine has split in multiple places. That’s the sign of a much-loved and well-used book!

It is extremely comprehensive and illustrated with photographs of the creatures and plants in their natural habitats, which is how you’d see them as a diver.

I’ve used the book after dives, but also as part of the volunteer training course I’m doing at the Two Oceans Aquarium, to identify sea plants and animals in rock pools and in the aquarium exhibits. It’s useful for the whole family, even if you’re not all divers, because it covers shore creatures as well as those found only at depth.

The book has been through several editions. The latest one (see the cover below) is greatly expanded, with more user-friendly contents pages (it’s arranged a lot like bird books, with colour-coded pages).

I use this book a lot; I would recommend it as a first or second purchase for a local diver. It covers the entire coast of southern Africa, so you may not find as much regional detail as you need, but that’s where the SURG publications step in and fill the gap! (More on those later.)

You can buy the book here if you’re in South Africa. Otherwise go here.

Shark tale follow-up

After his shark sighting at Long Beach last week, Tony emailed local guru Georgina Jones of SURG – more on SURG (Southern Underwater Research Group), and Georgina’s work in particular, will follow in another post (probably a book review). Tony wanted to find out whether his observation that there was no visible marine life, no fish and no movement at Long Beach on the day he saw the shark had anything to do with the presence of the creature, or whether it was uncorrelated. Georgina passed Tony’s email on to Alison Kock at Save Our Seas, a veteran white shark researcher based in Cape Town.

Alison’s reply – which is filled with fascinating nuggets of information about shark monitoring in Cape Town and great whites in general – is reproduced below:

Thank-you very much for forwarding this encounter. I keep a database of all white shark-human encounters in Cape waters and with your permission would like to add this encounter and your name, Tony and contact numbers to this database. Interestingly another sighting in the same area was recorded on the 23 August, and there were two white shark sightings at Fish Hoek on the 25 Aug, and one on the 24 and one on the 20th (sharkspotters.org.za has sightings recorded at shark spotter beaches).

Tony, regards your observation one would certainly expect that larger fish and seals would be absent from an area temporarily where a white shark is patrolling. However, it’s also conceivable that smaller marine animals could perceive the shark as a threat. A huge misconception is that white sharks only eat these larger animals, but various smaller fish and invertebrates (bivalves, cuttlefish, squids, octopus, pilchards etc) have also been recorded in white shark stomach contents, particularly smaller sharks (Geremy Cliff data). Thus, these animals may also respond to an immediate presence of a white shark if perceived as a threat. However, I wouldn’t expect this behaviour to persist for long periods of time.

We have deployed small animal-borne cameras on white sharks over the years and have been able to get a sharks POV of what happens on a reef when the shark swims over it. Some smaller fish which you wouldn’t think to be on the menu do react by swimming out of harms way. However, the behaviour is usually instantaneous with ‘normal’ behaviour by the fish resuming almost as soon as the shark’s head has moved past. When we observe white sharks around the research boat, we record similar behaviour, the chumming often attracts large groups of various species of ‘bait fish’, these fish almost always respond to the approaching shark by moving out the way temporarily.

Thanks Alison!