The University of Cape Town has announced that a further three new species of shrimp, all spotted close to shore near Millers Point in False Bay, have been described and named. All three belong to the same genus (Heteromysis), and look similar, with pale bodies marked by red spots and stripes. One of these new (to science) species lives inside octopus dens, and another lives inside the shell of certain types of hermit crab. These three shrimps join the stargazer shrimp that was discovered by and named for Guido Zsilavecz, citizen scientist and author of several books on False Bay’s marine wildlife.
Two of the new species were discovered by local film maker Craig Foster, founder of the Sea-Change project about which we read last week. These types of discoveries are very exciting and should be a great inspiration and encouragement to divers and other water users. Time in the water is rewarded. If you can’t identify something, send an email with its photo to SURG. It is possible to make significant contributions to science while holding down an entirely non-scientific day job!
Last weekend we chose to dive Hout Bay, partly because I expected Simon’s Town to be a little too busy given it was nearing the end of the Lipton Cup, a sailing regatta hosted by False Bay Yacht Club. The sea was flat, with light winds and sunny weather and good visibility. We did three dives but by the third one were a bit chilly! It was sad to see all the poaching boats, and the damage that’s been done to the wreck of the Maori lately.
Diving at Vulcan Rock on Sunday
This weekend I think False Bay will be the place to be. We had really good conditions yesterday and the wind direction has been good for False Bay viz. There is going to be some swell so I think we will shore dive at Long Beach with students on Saturday (I’ll be focusing on my students, but casual divers are most welcome to tag along). We will hit the high seas for boat diving on Sunday. We will launch from Simon’s Town jetty to dive Atlantis at 9.30am and the beautiful Maidstone Rock at 12.00. Text or email me if you feel like a dive.
Physiology at the extremes
I attended a conference today focusing on how the human body responds to extreme conditions, with a focus on cold water immersion (but also including exposure to alcohol, drugs, and hyperthermia). It was fascinating, and one of the important things I took away from it is how important it is to take seriously our dives in Cape Town’s water. Our physiological responses and capabilities change after an extended period of time in cold water, and while you may feel that you’re still mentally sharp and fully in control, the opposite may be true, and this is when accidents happen. I’m looking forward to incorporating some of the things I’ve learned into our day to day diving activities at Learn to Dive Today.
Measuring wind speed on the boat
Dive travel
Pencil in a trip to Ponta do Ouro in late April/sometime in May next year. We’ll start planning it early next year, but we’ll aim for five days of diving with a day of travel on each side. Start saving now! We have had amazing experiences there – some of our favourite dives were done at reefs called Doodles and Texas.
Faraway friends
We are thinking of our diving friends in far off lands – Bernita and Tamsyn, sending all good thoughts your way!
Our third Sodwana trip (prior ones were in October 2010 and April 2011, with a Mozambique trip and a Durban trip in between) was from 26-30 April 2014. As usual we flew from Cape Town to Durban, rented vehicles (three cars between ten of us – two other reprobates drove ALL the way from Cape Town, although we suspect Shane hitched a lift on a car carrier for part of the way…) and drove the 350 kilometres from Durban to Sodwana. We stopped in Ballito for food, as we were planning to self cater.
Sodwana beach early in the morning
Coral Divers was our destination. Most of us had already dived with them on prior trips (Angie even learned to dive there!), and their position inside the park and excellent facilities and staff led us to choose to dive with them again. They have a gazebo on the beach, regular transport between the camp and the beach, and dive planning and organisation runs like clockwork. Our only quibble this time around was that their school rental gear – which several of our divers made use of – was in quite poor condition. Matthijs tried four different masks before he found one that didn’t leak, and the well ventilated wetsuits left something to be desired. Fortunately the water was a comfortable 25 degrees!
On the tractor heading to the beach – picture by Otti
We did six dives over three days, all on Two Mile reef. This is the cheapest option, and if conditions are dubious (as they were on our first day on the water), the best option. The further reefs (Five, Seven and Nine Mile) are magnificent, but require excellent buoyancy skills from visiting divers to protect the coral there, as well as favourable sea conditions for the longer boat ride.
The dives are for 50 minutes or until you reach 50 bar of air, whichever comes first. We visited mostly shallow sites (some of the Advanced divers did a deep dive on one of the days) so we were able to dive for a full 50 minutes most of the time. Because we were a group of twelve, we were generally split across two boats. We did manage some dives where we were all together at the same site, which was lots of fun! Some of the dives were lovely drift dives, which are fantastic because you use so little air. The surge (which has previously bedevilled me in Sodwana) was only severe on one of the days we dived.
After our two morning dives each day, we ate and then napped (me) or went exploring. In the evenings we braaied, cooked in the communal kitchen or ordered from the on site restaurant, and actually ended up going to bed fairly early. This was partly to escape Gerard when he got out of hand (on one notable occasion!), and partly because we were completely exhausted from our dives. We were also getting up very early to be ready to head down to the beach at 0645 each day.
Dinner time braai
It was a pleasure to spend time with such hilarious and interesting people, to do lovely long, warm, colourful dives, and to walk around in shorts and a t shirt while a warm 28 degree breeze blew. I hadn’t really scuba dived since last December, so it was great to get back into it again and remember how it’s done. Unfortunately I didn’t take many (or many nice…) photos underwater, as I was struggling with my (own, not rented) mask and I also initially didn’t feel confident enough to get close to anything. Once I settled my buoyancy – on the last day, alas! – I got going a bit more with my camera.
At the end of our trip, we said good bye to the other divers, and Tony and I stuck around in northern KwaZulu Natal to go to the bush for a couple of days. That’s another story…
Here are some photos to show you what it’s like to dive off a liveaboard. They were taken on our Red Sea trip in October. The centre of the diving activity was the dive deck at the lower level of the boat, at the back. There we hung our wetsuits, and we each had a cylinder and a box to keep our loose bits of gear in. We used the same cylinder throughout the entire trip, and the crew used the long hoses of the compressor to fill our tins right where they stood. We didn’t unbuckle our BCDs from our cylinders once.
A black (air) or green (Nitrox) tag around the neck of our cylinders indicated what gas we were diving with. We used Nitrox throughout. A numbered tag attached to the shoulder of our BCDs enabled the crew to keep track of who had returned from their dive. They also wrote down our dive times and maximum depths for each dive, and we signed those figures off each evening. This is in case of an accident – they know what your dive profile is for the week.
Giant stride off a liveaboard
Giant stride off a liveaboard
Divers on a Zodiac after a dive
The crew getting ready to tie the boat up for the night from a Zodiac
Christo and Becky after a dive briefing
Christo before a night dive
Traffic on the dive deck before a night dive
Our gear in its place on the dive deck
The board used for tracking divers and gas mixes
Liveaboards at the Thistlegorm
Liveaboards at the Thistlegorm
Liveaboard at Bluff Point at night
Divers setting off for a dive on a Zodiac
Climbing out of the water at the dive ladders
Liveaboards at Sha’ab Abu Nuhas
Christo after a night dive
The camera table at the back of the dive deck
There were dives before breakfast, after breakfast, after lunch, and at night. On the first and last days we did three and two dives, respectively. I managed three dives a day. Christo did four! Most of us skipped a dive here and there, owing to fatigue, illness (don’t drink the tap or sea water, is all I can say), and general laziness! The briefings were detailed, with maps or slideshows to familiarise us with each dive site. We were told what creatures to look out for, and where they like to hide. For wrecks that could be penetrated, the dive guides explained the preferred route more than once.
After getting into our wetsuits we sat down in front of our kit, shrugged it on with the help of one of the crew, and walked down to the dive deck. There we either put our fins and mask on and giant strided into the water, or held our fins and climbed onto one of the Zodiacs to be driven a short distance to the dive site. This technique was used at busy sites where there were many other liveaboards already anchored, or locations where it wasn’t safe for the big boat to go.
To get out of the water we were either fetched by a Zodiac, or we returned to the back of the liveaboard and climbed up the dive ladders in our full kit. Helping hands were ready to assist us with our fins. We’d put our kit back, hang up our wetsuits, put cameras into the rinsing container on the dive deck, and then eat. Every dive was followed by food! And often, a nap.
At times strong currents had us hanging onto lines down to a wreck, and this also made getting back to the liveaboard a challenge at times. On one occasion the current was so strong that I wasn’t sure I’d make it from the line tied to the corner of the stern onto the ladder in the middle of the stern – a distance of two metres – without getting swept away. Some acrobatics and long arm stretches from Tony saved the day!
The process of diving off a liveaboard is far less strenuous than diving in Cape Town, which is why we could still walk after doing three or four dives a day. For one thing, the warm water means you get far less fatigued, and you use less air, too. The crew were extremely helpful on our trip, even zipping our wetsuits and providing soapy water when pulling on our thick cold water Trilastic suits seemed too much like hard work!
A news story in June resonated uncomfortably with me: a Nigerian sailor survived for two days in a pocket of air trapped beneath the tugboat he was in, which capsized in heavy seas. The tug was servicing an oil platform off the Nigerian coast.
I was immediately reminded of the Miroshga, an unseaworthy whale watching vessel that capsized in appalling conditions off Hout Bay in October 2012. The boat had its bilge pump installed UPSIDE DOWN, and was rated for over 40 passengers when it’s only five metres longer than our boat – which can take seven passengers (and when Seahorse is fully loaded, she feels full). Furthermore, the Miroshga hadn’t had a SAMSA inspection since fundamental changes were made to the vessel and its engines. The money-hungry decision to head out in a 25 knot south easterly wind and high seas was incredibly irresponsible.
Most people who go on seal cruises, whale watching or cage diving don’t spend half their lives on or near the sea, and simply don’t have the tools to assess whether conditions are safe and whether the boat is seaworthy. The passengers trusted the charter operator and SAMSA, and were badly let down. One man drowned, and three women were trapped under the boat in pockets of air for several hours, their limbs dangling in the freezing water, until rescue divers brought them out. I cannot imagine how traumatic the experience was for them. The rest of the passengers were rescued by a boat full of poachers, and by some incredible NSRI volunteers. It was a shameful day for the boat charter operators, and for those responsible for legislating and enacting maritime safety provisions in South Africa.
I digress. What happened in Nigeria? Out of the twelve crew on board the tugboat, ten bodies were recovered, one was lost, and the twelfth crewmember, Harrison Okene, was discovered alive, under the boat in 30 metres of water, surviving by breathing from an air pocket. Upon being rescued by divers sent to retrieve the crew’s bodies (can you imagine their shock at being greeted by a living person when they were expecting only corpses?), Okene had to undergo sixty hours of decompression in order to avoid being bent. He’d been breathing air at four atmospheres for two and a half days!
How large does the bubble have to be so that a person in it can have indefinite supply of breathable air?
The reason it’s even possible to have an “indefinite” supply of air is that if the bubble is large enough, oxygen will diffuse out of the surrounding water back into the bubble, and carbon dioxide won’t build up to fatal concentrations. You can read through the discussion if you want to (fun to see physicists arguing, nice if you like formulas!) or there’s a news article here about the theoretical bubble size that would be required for survival. Turns out the actual air bubble was close to the size calculated by the physicists that would allow survival for at least the time that Okene was submerged. Lucky, lucky man!
Update: Here’s the helmet cam video from one of the rescue divers who brought Mr Okene to the surface. The text at the beginning is wonky – persist. Note the South African accents! The diver’s voice is squeaky – I think because he’s breathing a gas mix with helium in it. It gets good at about 5:30 but it’s extremely interesting to watch in its entirety to see what sort of conditions these divers work in, and how the surface support talks them through their tasks and keeps them calm.
We returned from our Red Sea liveaboard trip on Sunday, and have been slowly returning to normal life (essentially doing things other than eating, sleeping, diving in warm water with magnificent visibility, and lounging around on deck like millionaires). It’s been tough.
Two of the blue o two liveaboards at the jetty
The itinerary we followed was the Northern Wrecks and Reefs one offered by blue o two. Our vessel was M/Y blue Melody, on the right in the photo above. We dived wrecks like the Thistlegorm, Giannis D, and Chrisoula K, and a number of reefs. We did a couple of spectacular drift dives, and on most of the wrecks there was the opportunity to go inside for the suitably qualified. It was compulsory to dive with an SMB. The most memorable reef dives were done inside the Ras Mohammed National Park.
Captain Mohammed and Tony on the fly deck
Life on board the boat had a simple rhythm: dive, eat, sleep, repeat. During surface intervals the crew moved to new sites, and we either dived directly from the liveaboard or were transported short distances (in full kit) on Zodiacs – rubber ducks like the ones we use in Cape Town. During the time we were away, we had the opportunity to do 21 dives of which four were night dives. The diving was spread over six days. We skipped a couple of dives for various reasons including tiredness and illness, but overall managed to do a lot of diving in a short space of time. The warm water and helpfulness of the crew meant that it wasn’t nearly as physically taxing as you’d imagine. We used Nitrox throughout, not so much because we were doing particularly deep dives and needed the extra time (though it certainly helped), but for overall health reasons and to minimise fatigue.
Bluff Point
Most of the time we were within sight of land. The landscape is mainly desert, with spectacular sunrises and sunsets. The reefs rise to within a few feet of the surface, and are clearly visible from the boat when it isn’t moving. Navigation in the Red Sea must be very tricky for the inexperienced, however. The number of spectacular wrecks is testament to this!
Sunset over the Red Sea
The day we arrived in Egypt and the day of our departure were mostly spent at the Marriott Hotel in Hurghada, waiting to board our vessel (the first day) and the plane (the last day). We lounged by the pool and checked out the private beach there, and felt very relaxed.
Prior to the trip we had some (understandable) concerns regarding the safety of travelling through Egypt to get to the liveaboard, but we kept tabs on the travel advice provided by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the UK. Since we would merely be in transit through Cairo airport, and would not actually be sleeping a single night on land, we were happy to go ahead with the trip. The Red Sea coastal area has been extremely calm throughout the recent unrest, and, as it derives 95% of its revenue from tourism, the locals have been keen to keep it that way.
The beach at the Marriott Hotel in Hurghada
We took a lot of photo and video on the trip, and will be sorting through it and sharing it over the next couple of months. Watch this space!
Yesterday we had Craig’s point of view… Here’s Christo van Schalkwyk’s account of the Clan Stuart dive on which he and his fellow divers encountered a white shark. Christo has been diving since March 2012, and in the time since then has logged over two hundred dives, most of them here in Cape Town.
About 30 seconds into the dive, just as I got to the bottom, a little to the north of the engine block, I saw the shark approach from the south. It swam past us towards the north. It turned and swam back down the wreck in a southerly direction, on the inshore side. For a while it was out of sight. We kept looking out for it, while motioning to the other divers to bunch together and stay low on the wreck. A few seconds later we saw it approaching from the south again. I could see both eyes as it swam straight at me. When it was about three metres away it veered off slightly to swim past us, parallel to the wreck. At this point it was only about two metres away from Craig and me. I remember choosing the spot where I was going to hit it if turned back towards us.
Fortunately it kept gliding past and as the pectoral fins came past, something seemed to disturb it. It flicked its tail once and shot away to the north. (Seeing the video taken by Vlad later, it seemed as if one of us exhaling was what disturbed the shark, but this is only speculation.) After a second or two, it was out of sight and we didn’t see it again.
We crouched down low on the wreck, looking around, and repeated the instructions to the other divers to keep close and low down. At this time we saw Sergey coming towards us from a rocky outcrop (or piece of wreckage) about 3-4 metres away from the main wreck, towards the deep side. We beckoned (with some urgency) to him to come closer. He swam quite slowly towards us, but when he got close enough, we pulled him down onto the wreck with us. As he was positioning himself, his weightbelt caught on a piece of the wreck and came off. I had to help him put it back on from underneath.
We stayed where we were (just north of the engine block of the wreck) for about another minute or so. I remember looking at my dive computer which read 2 minutes at that point. It didn’t seem a viable option to surface, even though I knew Tony would be close with the boat. I didn’t fancy the notion of hanging around on the surface, trying to get all 6 divers on the boat, all the while not knowing where the shark was. After another half a minute or so, Craig and I had a hand signal discussion on what to do next. He suggested heading south down the centre of the wreck, in the opposite direction to the shark’s last known heading. I thought we should go for the beach, to the north west. We agreed on the beach and started off in that direction, staying very low.
Just before leaving the wreck, Craig’s weight belt came loose as well. I took the reel from him and held on to his BCD with one hand and the wreck and reel with the other, while he tried to put the weight belt back on. This seemed to take forever – I remember seeing Vlad sliding in under a raised sheet of steel and hiding there (and feeling a bit jealous of his nice cover…). Eventually I gave the reel back to Craig and got him to hold on to the wreck and got in underneath him to try and see what the problem with the belt was. Once the belt was back on, we dropped down onto the sand on the shore side of the wreck.
Then we had to swim over the sand, without cover, towards the beach. It took a while to gather the group together to do this. We stayed very low, flat on the bottom. As we swam the group seemed to fan out, so we stopped once or twice to reassemble. Craig kept watch to the north, while I scanned the southern arc. Once we got into shallower water the surge took us along quite quickly and the group spread out even more, but it wasn’t possible to do anything about that any more. We got tumbled a bit in the breakers on the beach, but in the end managed to help each other to the beach unscathed with only the loss of one mask.
Total dive time: 13 minutes
Boat entry, shore exit.
Christo’s diagram of the dive site, with indications of what happened where, is below. Click on the image to enlarge it!
It has been a hectic period and we have dived almost every day for the last two weeks. Gary, Oscar and Dineo are doing their Divemaster course and the weather has not been too hectic. Last Sunday we had amazing conditions in Hout Bay (facebook photos here) and again on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday we did shore dives in the morning and boat dives in the afternoon. Today we dived with the sevengill cowsharks and the visibility was 6-8 metres, far better than we had on Outer Photographer’s Reef (2 metres) on Tuesday.
Christo near the shot line
Weekend dives
Once again we approach a weekend full of expectant divers and reading and deciphering the forecasts is a little like Russian Roulette. The weather websites (the nine I check) forecast a south westerly wind today but I can assure you the wind blew north north west the entire day. It kind of makes believing in the weekend weather a little difficult.
It is going to be a play it by ear weekend so please text me your preference for Saturday or Sunday and I will text you by 7.00 am on the relevant day if it’s on. Why you ask? Well the current Atlantic water temperature is 21 degrees which most often means green dark no viz diving. Also, the forecasted wind is extremely strong and not quite from the right direction to clean things up in the Atlantic. But we might get lucky.
Data from a weather buoy on the Atlantic side of the peninsula
There may be an option of False Bay diving as the wind today made some improvement to the water colour and the temperature has dropped to 18 degrees…. Most often good viz in False Bay means cooler temperatures.
We are 90% certain that we’ll be taking a week long live aboard dive trip to the Red Sea in October. The company we will use is probably blue o two. You can see package prices on their website to get an idea of how much you’ll need to set aside (note that not all costs are included – click on “Availability” to get the detailed timetable of trips, and under package details “Click for more details” to see what isn’t included). We will make a booking early in April. I won’t be doing a group booking for this trip; Clare and I will just let you know which itinerary and dates we plan to do, and you may book the same ones if you’re keen. We might be able to assist with finding you a cabin buddy if you don’t have one already, but the booking is completely up to you. You’ll need to be Nitrox certified and an Advanced diver to make this trip worthwhile – you will have the opportunity to do four or five dives a day, and if you’re on air they’ll be extremely short!
Aliwal Shoal trip
Our planned dates for this trip are 26/27 April to 1 May. Worker bees will need 2-3 days’ leave for this. If the weather at Aliwal Shoal is too rough for launches, we can do some dives at the aquarium in Durban and possibly off the boat or shore there. I will have more information on this in next week’s newsletter. You’ll need to be an Advanced diver and confident on boats for this trip. We’ll fly to Durban and drive about an hour south to Umkomaas.
Kev’s Ledge was one of the deeper sites we visited. It’s so named because the reef drops off about six metres to the sand, making for an enjoyable wall dive. This dive went really quickly, and there was much to see. Kev’s Ledge lies between Anchor and Wayne’s World, and should there be a strong current, a dive on Kev’s could turn into a drift dive over to one of these other two reefs.
Guineafowl moray eel
Puffer fish
Crocodile fish (longhead flathead)
On the reef next to the wall our Divemaster showed us this male ribbon eel (the females are yellow, juveniles are black). He tried so hard to look intimidating, and succeeded instead in looking adorable. We also saw a crocodile fish (which also goes by the euphonious name of “longhead flathead”). I must admit to requiring this fish to be pointed out to me several times, as it was so well camouflaged.
Ribbon eel trying to look scary
Towards the end of the dive we came upon an area of magnificent overhangs and coral structures. One of these was Rianna’s Arch (skipper Wayne tried to scare us with ghost stories about the lady Rianna for whom the arch was named). I didn’t get any decent photos of the arch (too much water – or diver – movement), but the topography is incredible. We dropped into a deep bowl-shaped cave where a turtle was feeding peacefully on the sea floor, watched her for a while, and then began to decrease our depth because we were running out of time.
Three Sisters is located off Ponta Malongane and ranges in depth from 19 to 26 metres. It’s (surprisingly) comprised of three separate little reefs, with one much larger than the other two. We spent most of the dive on this larger sister, which stands high off the sand and is covered with beautiful, huge plate corals and hordes of fish.
Beautiful plate corals at Three Sisters
A burst of colour on top of the wall at Three Sisters
The aquarium feel on top of Three Sisters
A rock cod hides under some plate coral at Three Sisters
I think this looks like the bow of a ship (it isn’t)
A wrasse on the reef
Plate coral at Three Sisters
Unfortunately the current was probably too strong for this site on the day we did it – owing to the small size of each of the sisters, a strong current can push you off the reef very quickly and onto the surrounding sand. It was a bit of a struggle to stay on top of the reef, but I did spend a bit of time there because it was swirling with fish of all sizes and I felt as though I was in an unspoiled little underwater paradise. The corals there were also particularly gorgeous.
Raggy scorpion fish – look closely – at Three Sisters
It was easier to shelter from the current behind the high wall on the side of the reef. There is a slight overhang, which made it a bit dark (it was also fairly deep), but lots to see. The wall rewarded careful study with a frog fish (angler fish), paper fish, moray eels, and other shy creatures. As we moved towards the second sister, we encountered a blue spotted stingray, which took off as we approached.
An anglerfish (frogfish) under the wall at the big sister
My picture of the frogfish above is rather over exposed – blame it on the new strobe, a confined space (lots of reflection) and not having enough time (because of the current) to fiddle with settings. But he’s there!
A guinea fowl blaasop checks out the camera
A black cheek moray on the high wall
A giant cushion star on a sandy area of the reef
Because of the depth and the number of dives we’d been doing over the preceding days, we ran out of time before running out of air! This dive seemed to go very quickly. When I came close to running out of no decompression time, I joined a couple of the other divers who were following divemaster Hannes by swimming after his line at about 5 metres’ depth. The water was clear enough that we could see most of what was going on below us. Also, there’s no harm in long safety stops!
Cruising over the reef
JP the photographer
James (foreground) and JP (background) at the safety stop
