This set of photos is cropped from pictures I’ve taken in False Bay since late 2009. Each picture was taken with the camera roughly horizontal, at about five metres’ depth. The idea is to track the seasonality of the colour of the water here – green to blue and back. In theory, anyway!
Click on the image to go to the set of photos on flickr. If you hover the mouse cursor over each square you’ll see the date it was taken on; if you want to know where in False Bay, click on the photo to see the description.
A recent dive to Castor Rock gave us the opportunity to see the beautiful Roman Rock lighthouse at the entrance to Simon’s Town harbour from the sea. The lighthouse was erected in 1861, and a lighthouse keeper used to live there, but it’s now fully automated. Roman Rock itself is submerged at high tide but sticks out of the sea at low water.
There are incredible pictures of this lighthouse in Gerald Hoberman’s book Lighthouses of South Africa. I was thrilled to be able to capture it from several different angles while we waited for the other divers to finish their dive.
This beach is a popular training site for the dive schools in the greater Cape Town area. If you’re one of Tony’s students, here’s how to get there. There’s a safe parking area, public restrooms, and flat calm waters suitable for swimming, snorkeling, and of course diving!
It has a very easy shore entry and the dive site has much to offer. Many a recently qualified diver wants to see no more of Long Beach as they will most likely have done several training dives there for the duration of their course and will feel they have seen it all.
Agile klipfish at Long Beach
This is so far from the truth. In reality few divers, students or instructors venture far from the beaten track, i.e. down the pipeline, around the wreck, and back to the beach. We built a small artificial reef less than 50 metres from the shore and not too far north of the barge wreck, yet very few people have found it. There is also a wreck approximately 160 metres to the southeast of the slipway, again seldom visited.
John Dory at Long Beach in January 2010
The list goes on and there is an entire chapter on Wikitravel written by Peter Southwood which if you read this article and follow the routes laid out, it takes you to a whole host of things such as huge anchor chains, a massive anchor, concrete blocks, a pipe structure, several smaller parts of wrecked fishing boats and more.
During Open Water dives much of the time is spent on skills and if you do not venture too far off you will have seen but a small area of the dive site. We dive there often, I have done a little over 200 dives there this past year and we seldom fail to see something new. Despite the keen sense we have for exploring , as you become more and more relaxed in the water, you read a few books on ocean creatures, slowly you start to see things you never noticed before. Your sense of awareness increases, your knowledge increases and so does your sightings.
Juvenile Cape sole at Long Beach
Clare recently discovered a baby Cape sole in the sand (it’s in the picture above in the top right quadrant near the middle of the picture… I promise!). They have been there at this time of year for ages, we have just never seen one but they have been there for sure. Another way to ensure you see a lot more than you expect to is to slow down. The vast majority of Clare’s photos are taken during the long periods she spends hanging around while I perform skills with students. This time spent without finning off into the distance also encourages creatures that hid away when they heard us coming to slowly peek out to see what’s happening, creating some memorable photo opportunities.
You will be amazed at what you can see on the sand in shallow water. The life changes with depth and deeper dives will also produce a different spectrum of life as you move down or up through the water column. Long Beach has a lot to offer, but to see something different you must venture a little further than you did during your training dives.
You can visit the same dive site every day for a year and something will always be different. Different seasons bring different life to different parts of the ocean all year long.
Tony has been ragging Grant incessantly about the existence (or lack thereof) of a yacht that lies at Klein Tafelberg, so when we visited Klein Tafelberg Grant dropped the shotline practically on top of the hapless Patti. Klein Tafelberg is characterised by a pinnacle that extends from the sand at about 34 metres, up to 15 metres.
Wreck of the yacht Patti
Next to the pinnacle lie the remains of Patti, the yacht, at a precipitous angle (my pictures of the yacht aren’t great). I can attest that she does exist, but is missing her propellor. We explored her for a few minutes, and then swam north east to a sandy patch where Cecil did some skills.
Yacht wreckage
There are a few things that make this a magnificent dive.
Visibility
Both times I’ve dived the Tafelberg Reef complex, the visibility has been magnificent. The water is cold (very cold!) but so clean you almost feel dizzy when you fall over the side of the boat. Clean water means that even below 30 metres, light penetrates. There isn’t so much colour loss, and it isn’t dark like the dive we did on the SAS Fleur a couple of weekends ago. The day we did this dive was sunny, which made for a very beautiful experience.
Topography
Side of the pinnacle at Klein Tafelberg
The Tafelberg Reef complex is huge, and very spectacular. The clean water allowed us to appreciate the massive granite boulders and pinnacles, some split dramatically. The yacht wreck stands almost vertically with lots of railings and piping lying around her.
Marine life
This is an Atlantic dive site, and is characterised by a fair amount of kelp and the usual red seaweeds that we found on the Maori and BOS 400. Because the reef is so spectacular, my focus wasn’t so much on hunting for nudibranchs (though I’m sure they’re there) as appreciating the awesome landscape we found ourselves in. I couldn’t miss the many West coast rock lobster hiding between the boulders, though.
There are two really special inhabitants of Tafelberg Reef I’d like to mention.
Basket stars
Basket stars at Tafelberg Reef
Basket stars are related to starfish and brittle stars. They are usually found in deep water and last time we visited Tafelberg Reef I (with no camera) was totally enchanted with their beautiful curly arms. They extend them into the water column to feed. I was determined to find myself a basket star on this dive, and I located several. They are so extravagantly beautiful that it’s hard to believe that they’re fully functional creatures as well!
Basket star feeding
Seals
We were doing a dive for Cecil’s Deep Specialty course, and needed to do two things: one was to let him breathe off an alternate air source (Tony took a 7 litre stage cylinder along for this purpose) and the other was to do an eight minute safety stop, as a simulated deco requirement. Our computers were all set on air, although we were all using a fairly rich mix of Nitrox, so although our computers went into deco and demanded the safety stop, it wasn’t actually required. As part of Cecil’s training, however, it was essential.
Anyway… During our extremely long safety stop we were visited by several frisky Cape fur seals from the nearby colony at Duiker Island. They came to investigate the boat when we arrived at the dive site, and stuck around until we surfaced.
Cape fur seal silhouetted from below
Seals are lots of fun in the water. They’re like dogs. Sometimes they bare their (large, yellow) teeth at you and bark, and sometimes they like to bite things. Fortunately, as long as you keep your fingers out the way, they can’t get a proper grip on any sensitive body parts.
Dancing Cape fur seal
Tony had his head munched, as well as one of his fins, and Cecil nearly lost part of his buttocks and had his pillar valve investigated thoroughly. I was torn between laughing and taking photographs, and wondering whether the seal needed me to bitch slap it to show who was boss.
Colonial ascidians
Dive date: 10 April 2011
Air temperature: 24 degrees
Water temperature: 10 degrees
Maximum depth: 37.1 metres
Visibility: 20 metres
Dive duration: 36 minutes
We descended and ascended through a beautiful cloud of tiny jellyfish, illuminated by the sun.
Tony had three students who needed to finish their course, so we took them to Castor Rock. This is a large granite reef, a short distance from Long Beach in Simon’s Town where we were fetched by the boat. It’s just on the other side of the spectacular Roman Rock lighthouse.
Rocky crevices at Castor Rock
Like Partridge Point, the Castor Rock area is a large maze of scattered boulders and pinnacles. Different marine life can be seen depending on the depth. This makes for an interesting dive from start to finish, because you can do your safety stop next to a shallow portion of the reef.
Sea cucumbers, urchins, anemones, sea squirts and feather stars
There are the usual sea cucumbers, urchins, feather stars and sea stars, but this site seems to be a particular haven for handsome striped pyjama sharks and catsharks. We saw six or eight pyjama sharks, some sleeping in crevices and others swimming around. A night light sea jelly greeted us as we started the dive, and bright orange sea fans are abundant.
Silvertip nudibranch
The place is also nudibranch paradise – I found silvertip nudibranchs the size of hotdogs, and there were also gas flame nudibranchs in abundance.
Silvertip and gas flame nudibranchs at Castor Rock
The visibility was good, but the water in False Bay is still very green. We’re looking forward to winter diving!
Most of my Open Water training is conducted at Long Beach behind Simon’s Town station. Long Beach is an unassuming little beach with flat, calm waters in even the most unpleasant conditions. This, and the abundance of marine life and artifacts that can be seen beneath its waters, make it very suitable for Open Water students.
Long Beach, Simonstown
There are public restrooms and a parking area, both in reasonably good condition. There is usually a car guard of some description at the parking area. It’s a lovely place to spend a sunny day, and non-divers can play on the beach, snorkel or swim, and enjoy the view of False Bay, the navy harbour, and the mountains.
We also sometimes get picked up there by the boat, instead of driving all the way to Miller’s Point to launch.
Here’s how to get there… You’re driving roughly south (unless you’re coming from Cape Point) wherever your point of origin, away from central Cape Town.
Coming along the Main Road:
This is easy. Keep on the Main Road through all the coastal suburbs – Muizenberg, St James, Kalk Bay, Fish Hoek.
At the circle at the top of Fish Hoek Main Road, keep left and stay next to the sea. You are basically following the railway line along the coast.
Carry on through Glencairn, past the wetland on your right and the beach on your left
Pass Dixie’s Restaurant and the graveyard on your right, the Clan Stuart wreck sticking out of the sea on your left, and start keeping your eyes open…
The next large building on the left will be Simon’s Town station. Look out for the large red Station Kiosk sign at the pedestrian crossing.
Just after the station is a brown sign for Long Beach, pointing left.
Turn left there and follow Drie Gebroeders road down into the Long Beach parking area.
Coming on the M3 highway:
When you get to the end of the M3, turn right at the traffic light and contine through one more set of lights (Virgin Active on your right).
Just before the next set of lights take the slipway to the left, up onto Ou Kaapse Weg. This turnoff is not well signposted!
Now you basically stay on the same road until it ends abruptly in the ocean. Go over Ou Kaapse Weg into Sun Valley.
Continue straight through two sets of traffic lights (stopping if they’re red), onto the Glencairn Expressway (Blackhill Road). This takes you over a small mountain into Glencairn.
When you get to the sea, with a Spar on your left and a wetland on your right, turn right. Now you are on the Main Road.
Directions continue as from Item 3 in the Main Road section above!
Here’s Long Beach on Google maps. That’s the parking area in the middle, the restrooms at the bottom in the middle, and Simon’s Town station near the top.
SAS Somerset (on the right) at anchor in the V&A Waterfront
The current Deep Specialty we are running took us to visit the wreck of the SAS Fleur last weekend. She lies in 42 metres of water in the middle of False Bay. It was a 25 minute boat ride from our Long Beach pickup on a flat calm sea.
The bow of the SAS Somerset (the Fleur's sister ship)
This is the sister ship to the SAS Somerset moored behind the Two Oceans Aquarium and the rounded form is clearly visible along the length of the hull. The Fleur was sunk by naval gunfire near Simon’s Town on 8 October 1965.
Descending into the darkness
We descended on the shot line and slowed at 20 metres. We were already able to see the whole wreck below us – the conditions were exceptional but it was quite dark. We stopped briefly at 25 metres to ensure everyone was in good shape without any nitrogen narcosis, dropped a little lower to 30 metres and checked again. A final check took place at 35 metres on the deck of the wreck.
The superstructure of the ship seen from above
The ship is rusted extensively and most if not all the decking and side plates are rusted through, giving you an extremely clear view of everything inside the shell. We found several sleeping pyjama sharks and a catshark inside one of the hatches on the deck of the ship.
Bollard on deck
The visibilty was a good 10 to 12 metres on the wreck with a water temperature of 14 degrees. There was a strong current running parallel to the orientation of the ship on the sand. Large schools of fish hung over the wreck, facing into the current.
Mussels, urchins and strawberry anemones
The wreck is heavily encrusted with mussels, each of which is in turn encrusted with strawberry sea anemones in beautiful shades of pink. There are many urchins, and also some large tube worms, which really give the feel of being in deep water!
Tube worm
We returned to the line and started a slow ascent with a stop at 20 metres, 10 metres and finally a 5 metre stop. We deployed SMBs as we started our series of safety stops, because given the exposed nature of the site and the possiblity of seeing sharks on the way up, it was very important for Grant to know exactly where to expect our heads to break the surface.
Rusted decking
Cecil, Clare and I were using 15 litre Nitrox 30% cylinders, and ascended with plenty of air to spare. We were entertained by seals at our safety stops, and a large group of them frolicked near the dive boat as we waited to climb in after the dive. The dive site is quite close to Seal Island, but happy and comfortable seals indicated that we didn’t need to worry about sharks that day.
Cecil in the dark
This is a spectacular dive, and we were very fortunate to do it in perfect conditions.
Sunny Cove is a beautiful dive site in Fish Hoek bay, not often dived any more (perhaps because of its association with great white sharks). Park in the lay-by. To get in, you need to walk over the railway bridge wearing your kit – quite a steep stroll.
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Recent Dives
The weather is changing, many weeks of planned launches being cancelled seem to soon be a thing of the past. Last weekend we went to the quarry in Somerset West to find some depth for the Deep diver specialty. The water looks clear and inviting but soon gets dark.
Blue Rock Quarry - looks inviting, yes?
We descended down the line below this buoy at Blue Rock Quarry (above). Below are the walls of the quarry, while the water was still fairly shallow.
The walls of Blue Rock quarry
This photo was taken around 30 metres, where it’s dark and obstructed by large dead trees.
Dark diving in the quarry
On Sunday we went to Long Beach for some rescue skills and for Cecil to get used to using a sling tank, a requirement for deep technical diving and cave diving, something Cecil is preparing for.
Cecil practising with a pony bottle
Here’s a picture of Clare exhaling into her SMB. A good way to fill an SMB rather than using a regulator (your octo): you can hold your SMB open just above your head and exhale into it.
Clare inflating an SMB
On Tuesday I started a new Open Water course and we dived in a warm 19 degree water with 6 metre visibility.
Sodwana
The Sodwana trip is close and we leave on the 16th April for a four night, 6 dive warm water experience. For anyone that has suddenly decided “why not?” there are still places, it won’t be too bad diving there as the water is only 27 degrees at the moment and the visibility is a little poor for Sodwana, about 25 metres . The diving and accommodation is around R1800 for four nights and six dives including tanks and weights. You will be hard pressed to find a better location than Sodwana within such easy range of Cape Town.
This weekend
On Saturday we are diving the wreck of the Fleur at 0830. This is the sister ship to the grey ship moored outside the Two Oceans Aquarium and I believe she was scuttled in the bay not too far from Seal Island and lies on the sand at around 42 metres. This is a dive for Deep Specialty only.
The next launch will be shallower with a maximum depth of 18 metres and will be a qualifying dive for several Open Water students. There is space on this launch for now, Grant will launch from Millers Point and then pick us up at Long Beach. Please SMS if you want to be on the boat.
The weather is good so I have new courses running every week. We have Open Water, Deep, Rescue and Divemaster courses running at the moment but the conditions are getting to be ideal for a Night diving specialty. If you would like to try this give me a shout.
With regular good boat diving in our near future I will run a special on the Advanced course for four people. If you want to know who else is keen let me know and we can get started
The specialty for April will be Night diving so dig out your torch and charge the batteries.
The Dive Site
This is a free magazine and by far the best diving magazine in South Africa. You get a free online weekly version and a print version every quarter for free. All you have to do is sign up for it. I have been on the list since day one and have never been spammed so I can assure you it is produced by a quality company: www.thedivesite.co.za.
Permits
I can’t end a mail without a gentle reminder about permits. If you don’t have one, please get it tomorrow!!!
For those of you that read our blog you should know that thanks to Clare it was rated as one of the top blogs worldwide and had over two thousand reads in 24 hours. If you have not visited it you should as there are most likely pictures of you on it plus it has a lot of diving related information.
African Diver is a freely available South African diving magazine, that appears only in electronic format. You can subscribe to their newsletter which alerts you to new editions, which come out six times a year. The magazine has been running for about two and a half years.
African Diver issue 14
The magazine covers a wide range of diving and ocean-related topics, from dive sites and dive travel, to conservation, safety (they have a close association with DAN), wrecks, photography and free diving. The focus is on diving in Africa. The photos are gorgeous and plentiful. Because it’s digital format, large photo spreads don’t cost the publishers anything extra, which makes for a fantastic full-screen experience.
That said, I don’t find the format of the magazine particularly user-friendly – you have to download a pdf file which can be up to 15MB in size, so it involves commitment – and I do struggle to commit to reading anything on a computer screen for a significant length of time (rich coming from a blogger who hopes you WILL commit to reading THIS on a computer screen!).
But the format enables the magazine to be free and it does mean you can change the font size to super ginormous if that’s what your eyes need. Also, you can zoom into those stunning photos to your heart’s content. There is also an option that enables you to read the magazine online, without downloading the whole thing.
There is an interesting blog on the African Diver site, that is updated more frequently than the magazine.
Latest issue (Issue 14)
Georgina Jones of SURG writes an article about local dive site Star Walls (in the Atlantic). There’s a final installment from a couple who drove cross-country from Betty’s Bay in the Western Cape to Japan, in order to highlight what humans are doing to our oceans. There’s an article on shark finning in Mozambique (by the same author who wrote an article on the identical topic for the latest issue of The Dive Site).
There’s a very interesting article about deep diving, and the independent attitude that is required by divers when they reach the Advanced qualification stage. The author, Debbie Smith, lists the aspects that an Advanced diver should be able to manage: their own kit, their buoyancy, tucking in their gear, getting down, safety stops, helping themselves on the boat, and so on. It’s a very salutary reminder that even though you can theoretically be qualified as an Advanced diver after doing only nine dives ever, there’s a lot more to it than that.
There’s a very inspiring article about disabled scuba divers, and a safety review from DAN of 2010.
