I think redfang triggerfish (Odonus niger, also called red toothed triggerfish) are ridiculously beautiful, and I love to find myself near a group of them while on a dive. They have bodies in graduated shades of blue that are big enough to see, and red teeth (that can be quite hard to see).
They sometimes aggregate in mid water to feed on plankton, as they are doing in this video. You can also see divers – Otti and Matthijs – enjoying the beautiful coral reef and lovely visibility. This was filmed at Chains, a dive site on Two Mile Reef in Sodwana.
Grand Central is a beautiful dive site in the middle of Two Mile Reef, Sodwana. Here, a school of damselfish swarms in mid water over the coral, perhaps feeding. The stronger the current, the closer to the reef they will feed.
Right at the end of one of our very first dives in Sodwana this year, we spotted dolphins below us, swimming away over the sand. Here’s a very short and not terribly brilliant video of them.
Some of the sites we visited on Two Mile Reef were noticeably more barren – with less coral and more sand and rock – than others. I wonder whether this is a seasonal (or annual, or multi-year) variation, or whether it’s a slow process of the reef becoming silted up. Sites towards the middle of Two Mile, such as Garden Route, were covered with coral and looked exceptionally healthy.
Coral encrustation
Sea star in Sodwana
Blue sea star
Raggy scorpionfish
Knifejaw feeding on the coral
Guinea fowl moray eel
Porcupine fish
Half the polyps on this coral have retracted
Moorish idol
Fish milling about on the reef
Giant sea cucumber
Angelfish close to the coral
White barred rubberlip
Blue spotted ribbontail ray
I found a heart in the coral
Otti and Matthijs (and Angie in the background)
Sand gullies in the reef
Tami at the safety stop
Sodwana sees a lot of divers doing a lot of dives, year-round. There are at least eight dive charters operating from the beach, and Two Mile in particular sees some heavy traffic – including Open Water divers (many from Johannesburg) doing their first sea dives. During a recent conversation, Gerard blamed the heavy boat traffic for what he perceives as a slow decline in the health and biomass of the reef life in Sodwana; I wonder if the fishing activity that somehow co-exists with the dive charters has anything to do with it. Or perhaps we are imagining things, and just happened to dive on a few parts of the reef that were having a quiet day.
Sea fan on the sand
Sodwana is a Marine Protected Area, but perhaps it is not getting the monitoring and policing it requires to be fully effective. This is a widespread problem in all of South Africa’s MPAs, as well as a concerning lack of scientific thinking in the government ministries that are supposed to be keeping an eye on these things.
Freckled hawkfish
Whether we are imagining the changes in the reefs in Sodwana or not, it’s still a very beautiful place to dive, and worthy (as are all wild places on this earth) of our protection. You should go there and see for yourself!
We’ve been back from our Sodwana trip for almost a month, and I’m starting to look forward to my next dive trip, which has not been planned yet. Alas. With this small problem in mind I had a rummage through the underwater photos I took while we were in Sodwana, to try and recreate the experience.
Under the boat
I haven’t done a lot of diving this year, and no underwater photography to speak of, so I viewed my camera as a strange, unfamiliar machine when we arrived in Sodwana, and spent most of the six dives figuring out how it all worked (again). Furthermore, my confidence in my buoyancy wasn’t great at the start of the trip, so I didn’t want to go too close to anything. I want to punch divers who crunch the coral, so I didn’t want to be that diver this time around!
Swimming across the sand gap at Stringer
As a result my underwater photos from the trip are mostly quite questionable. I include some here, more to show you how beautiful the reefs and clear water can be in Sodwana, rather than for you to marvel at my prowess in underwater photography. I took several videos, which I’ll share in the coming weeks – you can get an idea of how good the visibility is and how abundant the coral is from a bit of moving picture footage.
Angie photographing snappers
We struggled a little with the surge on one of our diving days in particular, but this is something that is a fact of life when diving on South Africa’s north coast. We mostly did shallow dives, and the reefs at Sodwana lie along a very exposed stretch of coast with few natural bays to protect divers from wind and swell. These factors combined to expose us to some near-washing machine conditions at times! Relaxing in the water and letting the surge move you about is the only way to deal with it, assuming you’ve got a handle on your buoyancy. Holding onto the reef or swimming against the surge are bad ideas.
Otti is almost hidden by a school of tiny fish
Otti and Matthijs
Male ember parrotfish
Potato bass at Stringer
Porcupine fish is shy
Tami photographing something on the reef
Ember parrotfish (male)
Tony riding Kate’s cylinder
Safety stopping
You can see some photos from past Sodwana diving trips here.
We had a really great trip to Sodwana with a bunch of really great and lively people. Good diving, lots of laughs and many compromising photos. There are some photos on facebook, here and here. After Sodwana we headed to the KZN bush to enjoy another passion we share, wildlife. Very few moments in life are a special as the time you spend up close to a wild animal in its natural environment.
Happy divers on the beach in Sodwana
We got home late on Friday night and were up with the sparrows on Saturday to provide boat support for the Freedom Swim, a 7.5 kilometre open water swim from Robben Island to Big Bay in Blouberg. You will recall that Saturday was a beautiful day, so we had a great time out on the water. There is an album of photos from Saturday on facebook – check it out – Clare thinks it’s not getting enough love!
Table Mountain and a swimmer
Conditions forecast and weekend plans
The weather for this weekend all seems to hinge on today and tomorrow, as the forecasts all predict heavy rain and strong winds. The rain is lashing down right now and a vast amount of the run-off is going to end up in the sea. False Bay is clean right now so hopefully this won’t affect the weekend’s visibility too much. It seems the rain and wind might hang around until sometime Saturday plus a 5 metre swell tomorrow drags into Saturday as it drops off, so I think we will opt for the pool and Long Beach on Saturday and launch the boat on Sunday.
Cheetah mother and three cubs in the Munyawana Conservancy
Permits to dive in a Marine Protected Area
The MPA police (as I like to call them) have been checking permits so please make sure you have a valid permit. If you don’t, we have temporary permits available, for R45 each, and they are valid for one month, but it’s more cost effective to get a full year’s permit at the post office.
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…
We’ve been in Sodwana this week, and Tony and I are sticking around in that part of the world for another couple of days, so there’s no newsletter today. In case you really, really need something to read, here are a few highlights from the blog this past year or so:
