Have you tried this? It’s an art, but if you do it gently you can remove the entire shell of a raw egg without the white and yolk coming apart. The water pressure holds the contents of the egg intact.
South African eggs have really hard, thick shells – I learned this from watching British cooking shows on television – so it’s a delicate procedure to strike the egg hard enough to crack the shell, but not so hard that you splatter the contents everywhere. Having witnessed it, I can also add that smashing the egg on your buddy’s head will not have the desired effect.
Kevin McMurray is the author of Deep Descent, a riveting account of diving the wreck of the Andrea Doria. Here, he turns his attention to the largely forgotten wreck of the RMS Empress of Ireland, a liner that sank in Canada’s St Lawrence River in 1914, after colliding with a Norwegian vessel in thick fog. Over 1,000 people lost their lives. The Empresslies in just over forty metres of water, but the current, cold water, low visibility and lack of ambient light make it an extremely challenging dive site on which several divers have lost their lives.
McMurray provides a detailed account of the collision, sinking, and subsequent enquiries into the accident. He also describes the history of diving endeavours on the vessel, which began in 1964, when diving equipment was considerably more rudimentary than it is today. As with the Andrea Doria, it is possible to penetrate the Empress of Irelandthrough the collision hole in her side. The wreck lies partially on her side, which makes the interior disorienting.
The author has dived the wreck several times himself, which enables him to speak authoritatively of the challenges of cold water, low visibility diving (much like what we sometimes do in Cape Town). The wreck lies some distance out in the river (the St Lawrence is wide and eminently navigable) which has its own associated challenges, too.
There has been a fair amount of political wrangling over the wreck, perpetrated by rival dive charters, self-appointed guardians of the wreck site, and others who hoped to benefit materially from the wreck, and McMurray details some of this.
I found McMurray’s account of diving the Andrea Doria to be more immediate (and to give me more nightmares) than Dark Descent, but it is nonetheless an extremely interesting book that itself serves as a monument to what is Canada’s worst peacetime disaster. Both McMurray’s books go some way to explaining the allure of challenging wreck dives that only few divers will ever have the chance to visit.
One cool, green day at Outer Photographer’s Reef, Tony took Brian and Esti for their deep dive as part of their Advanced course. The nice thing about this reef is that it’s a huge granite slab, 15-18 metres deep on top. If you drop off the edge of the slab onto the sand, you can get 25-27 metres. You can descend to the top of the reef, get comfortable (first deep dive, after all – some nerves are understandable!) and then swim over the side to get some depth. This is what’s happening in this video:
The four episodes of this History Channel series cover waves, tides and currents, predators, and pressure – all powerful features of the ocean that can be sensationalised (some more easily than others) and presented for shock value and as imminent threats to human life. Full advantage is taken of this fact.
This very American offering doesn’t boast the measured, mellifluous tones of Benedict Cumberbatch or Steve Toussaint as narrator, but the line-up of (mostly in-studio) guest narrators is quite impressive. Bruce Parker (The Power of the Sea), Susan Casey (The Devil’s Teeth and The Wave), David Gallo (scientist presenter of the TED Talk I mentioned here), Scott Cassell (student of the Humboldt squid), Richard Ellis (writer of a number of ocean history, art and sciencebooks), and Neil Hammerschlag (shark scientist) were familiar to me, as was big wave surfer Ken Bradshaw, from this article. The strange, uncomfortable way in which the studio narrators were filmed, with silent close ups interspersed with talking, was very annoying and must have been incredibly embarrassing to shoot. Or perhaps the cameraman took the footage when the narrators didn’t realise they were being filmed.
Unlike BBC documentaries, which tend to rely purely on incredible photography and fluent narrative to convey information, the History Channel favours a CGI-heavy approach that we encountered in Treasure Quest,Deep Sea Salvage, and also in the National Geographic SharkMen series.For the subject matter of this series – particularly the sections on waves, tides and currents – it was very appropriate and informative. The first episode, devoted to tsunamis, rogue waves and “monster waves”, made good use of CGI to illustrate the concepts as they were explained. The series was produced shortly before the Japanese tsunami of 2011 (there is a hastily tacked on “thoughts and prayers” disclaimer) and features interviews with a survivor of a tsunami in Samoa. I am fascinated by rogue waves – the whole episode could have been devoted to them but they don’t make for good television – we only have indirect evidence of their existence. Also, I could have done with more footage of giant ships battling storms, but that’s what youtube is for…
The least interesting and most irritating episode was the one devoted to the ocean’s top predators, which suggested that orcas are a serious threat to humans. As evidence, the cases of captive killer whales drowning and injuring their trainers at marine theme parks were cited. No mention was made of the psychosis that these whales suffer from as a result of confinement in a small, barren, completely unnatural environment. An incident in which orcas inexplicably rammed and sank a yacht in the Pacific Ocean is also described and re-enacted. Whether the orcas did what they did because they wanted to kill the people on board is highly debatable. There is also a half-hearted attempt to paint whales as potentially vicious killers, recounting incidents when sperm whales rammed whaling boats in the 19th century. More power to the sperm whales, I say.
The other dangerous predators were (predictably) white sharks, Humboldt squid, saltwater crocodiles and Australian box jellyfish. There was a small environmental message at the end of this episode, mentioning that squid will probably end up the top predators in our oceans if current trends – fishing out large predatory fish and global warming in particular – continue.
The third episode, on the immense pressures that objects in the deep ocean are subjected to, was very interesting to Tony and me as divers. A confusing interview with a diver whose brother got DCS on a wreck dive leaves (I suspect) much out. Were they even qualified divers? Why was he surprised that his brother felt unwell and confused as to the cause after he popped to the surface from 30 metres after a 30 minute dive?
The bulk of the third episode, however, recounts a 1981 experiment called Atlantis III in which three volunteers were taken in a saturation system to a simulated depth of 686 metres while breathing Trimix 10 (70% helium, 20% nitrogen and 10% oxygen). It took 31 days for them to decompress. The chief of the experiment, Peter Bennett, was the founder and former CEO of DAN. There’s a more information about the project here – worth a read (download the pdf slowly), and a briefer account here.
The series concludes with an episode on tides and currents, including rip currents. The massive tidal range of Morecambe Bay in the United Kingdom, is discussed at length. At low tide, up to 300 square kilometres of mudflats is exposed, and flooded again when the tide comes in. The guides who escort people out onto the mudflats when the tide is out seem like charming individuals – it is recommended not to wander around at low tide without local guidance. In 2004, the rising tide trapped and drowned 23 Chinese immigrants who were working the cockle beds – with such a large expanse of land to cover, the rising tide comes in at great speed. There is also a harrowing re-enactment of a father and his two sons getting washed out to sea in a rip current in Kauai that should make you think twice about swimming at beaches with warning signs on them.
You can get the DVDs here if you’re in South Africa. Foreigners, go here or here.
The wreck of the Andrea Doria, a luxury Italian cruise ship that sank in the north Atlantic ocean in 1956, is to some divers a sort of Mount Everest. It lies in about 70 metres of seawater, 160 kilometres from land. It has claimed ten lives to date and been the subject of several books and essays. Deep Descentdeals specifically with this wreck. Shadow Divers and The Last Divedescribe dives on the wreck, as well as featuring several of the regular charter captains and divers who pioneered diving on the Doria.
An Esquire article from 2000, written by Bucky McMahon (author of this article on Reunion’s shark problem), describes diving on the wreck, and attempts (as do they all) to pin down the allure of this particular piece of ocean debris. The article was written after a thirteen month period (late 1998- late 1999) during which five divers from the same charter boat (the Seeker) died on the wreck. It is written in a masculine, aggressive style that may be characteristic of McMahon’s writing, but is certainly characteristic of the sort of behaviour that seems to play (or have played) out on the Andrea Doria since people started diving her.
But how does it feel? What’s it like to know you are in a story that you will either retell a hundred times or never tell? You decide to drop down into the black hole. No, you don’t decide; you just do it. Why? You just do. A little ways, to explore the wreck and your courage, what you came down here to do. What is it like? Nothing under your fins now for eighty feet but the mass and complexity of the machine on all sides–what was once luminous and magical changed to dreary chaos. Drifting down past the cables that killed John Ornsby, rusty steel lianas where a wall has collapsed. Dropping too fast now, you pump air into your b.c., kick up and bash your tanks into a pipe, swing one arm and hit a cable, rust particles raining down. You’ve never felt your attention so assaulted: It is everything at once, from all directions, and from inside, too. You grab the cable and hang, catching your breath–bubble and hiss, bubble and hiss. Your light, a beam of dancing motes, plays down a battered passageway, where metal steps on the left-hand wall lead to a vertical landing, then disappear behind a low, sponge-encrusted wall that was once a ceiling. That’s the way inside the Doria.
We are off travelling for ten days, so this week’s newsletter is a list of dates to diarise!
The photos in this newsletter are from a lovely deep dive for an Advanced course that we did at Outer Photographer’s Reef on Saturday, followed by a dive at Phoenix Shoal just outside the harbour in Simon’s Town. There are some videos from the Outer Photographer’s Reef dive here. The visibility on both dives was 6-8 metres, but yesterday it had improved to 10 metres at Seal Rock and Shark Alley (no cowsharks though).
Anemones at Outer Photographer’s Reef
ScubaPro Day – Saturday 26 October
The ScubaPro Day takes place at False Bay Yacht Club on Saturday 26 October. Discounted boat dives and the chance to try some dive gear (tips on that here) – the participating dive charters will take bookings directly. There are four launch times, starting nice and early. Underwater Explorers is participating if you’re at a loose end!
Diversnight International – Thursday 7 November
November 7th is Diversnight International, sign up here. It is an international event with the aim of having as many divers in the water as possible at 8.13pm (2013 – get it?). If you enjoy night diving, or want to try it out, then you should be there. It’s quite festive. More details about this event will be provided when we get back from the Red Sea!
DAN Day – Saturday 9 November
We attended the last DAN day in Cape Town, which comprised a tour of the SA Navy diving facility, and a series of excellent talks by DAN medics and the NSRI. The next one is on Saturday 9 November, and comes highly recommended. Early booking is essential (the last one was fully subscribed) – more info here.
Here’s a sobering, long read for the early days of the new year. Tim Zimmermann wrote a detailed piece for Outside magazine in 2005, recounting the remarkable events that took place in October 2004 at a deep freshwater cave called Boesmansgat. A team of crack technical divers executed a mission to raise the body of a young man who had died while diving the cave ten years before. Things did not go according to plan, and I can’t explain to you how remarkable and tragic the outcome of the dive was.
One of the pinnacles, rising to within 10 metres of the surface
It seems that it’s only on magnificent days that we end up launching from Oceana Power Boat Club. While my colleagues were having an end of year function just above Clifton Beach, I was floating on the surface a few hundred metres off the same beach, waiting to be picked up by the boat after a dive. You’ll recall that we had a week or more of incredibly strong southeasterly winds at the end of November. The wind dropped during the night of 30 November, and hours later we were on the boat. The aim was to complete Christo’s deep dive for his Advanced course, and our hope was for excellent visibility.
Christo & Tony at the safety stop, at the thermocline
The Atlantic is so capricious, however, that the surface layer was already turning green with a layer of happily multiplying phytoplankton when we arrived to dive it. I am unreasonably pleased with this picture of Christo and Tony at the safety stop, right at the boundary of the blue and green water.
Brittle stars and mussels
Starting the dive
Sea fan
Christo and Tony at Monty’s Pinnacles
The reef wall covered with life
Tony and Christo discussing dive time
The reef extends into the blue
Swimming through a channel between boulders
Sunburst soft coral
Tumbled granite
Spectacular topography at Monty’s Pinnacles
White boulder
Small stands of kelp at 25 metres
Granite and kelp
Comb sea jelly at the safety stop
Beneath the layer of pale green we discovered crystal clear, freezing cold water. I can well understand how falling into the water in the Southern Ocean or Bering Sea can be fatal after this dive. Towards the end I doubted my ability to swim for the surface, and just wanted to lie down on the bottom and go to sleep!
Sponge with brittle stars
Monty’s Pinnacles refers to part of the North Paw complex, a large area of granite reef that has several distinct dive sites within it. We have also dived the northern pinnacle. Monty’s Pinnacles lie a short distance to the north of the exposed rocks that mark the main North Paw reef. There’s a map here. The two pinnacles were discovered by local diving legend Monty Guest while scootering around the area in 2010. They rise to within 10 metres of the surface. The topography is spectacular, with great ridges in the granite that are so straight as to appear to be machine-hewed. Small stands of kelp grow all the way down to 25 metres, testifying to the clarity of the water here at certain times of the year.
Tony and some brittle stars on a boulder
I didn’t see much unusual macro life (perhaps in my near-hypothermic state I had reduced powers of observation), but the rocks are heavily encrusted with mussels, brittle stars, and urchins. There are very large west coast rock lobsters everywhere you look. I saw the odd sea cucumber and a couple of anemones, but the chief beauty of this site for me is the passages and tumbled boulders that one swims among. There are swim throughs here, but we didn’t find them.
Granite reef
The view upon surfacing is spectacular, with the Twelve Apostles and the Atlantic seaboard to feast your eyes on.
Straight cuts through the granite
Dive date: 1 December 2012
Air temperature: 28 degrees
Water temperature: 9 degrees
Maximum depth: 25.9 metres
Visibility: 15 metres
Dive duration: 30 minutes
Violet spotted anemonesMini pinnacle (not one of the official ones)
I met an abalone poacher some time ago – just after I first came to Cape Town. He’d brought his regulator in for repairs to a dive shop that I happened to be visiting. When the technician opened it up, it was packed solid with particles of rust from his dive cylinders. Confronted with the information that it will cause him to drown one day if he doesn’t bring his cylinders for a visual inspection and hydrostatic cleaning, the poacher explained that his dive cylinders wouldn’t pass a visual, because they’re painted black (instead of South Africa’s regulation grey and canary yellow).
His cylinder isn’t the only thing that is painted black. ALL his dive gear – wetsuit, booties, hood, gloves, regulator, hoses, first stage, pillar valves, BCD, mask, fins, torches, dive computer – is black. There’s not a single reflective surface anywhere. According to the poacher, if he was standing by the side of the road in his dive gear at night, fully kitted up, and you drove past, you wouldn’t see him. At all.
What does he do with all this stealth gear? He dives, alone, at night, to fetch abalone (perlemoen) from the sea. His dives are often to 50 metres, on air, and he has no redundancy in his setup. No alternate air source on his cylinder (“For whom?” he asked), and no buddy. He sometimes does four such dives a night, and can make R40,000 for a single night’s work.
His view of what he does is that the abalone lives in the sea, and if he goes and fetches it, it’s his. “The ocean is free,” he said. Hardly anyone else is prepared to do four night dives in a row to depths of 50 metres with no support except for a boat on the surface (with no lights showing), and to look for abalone and pry them off the rocks with a crowbar. Why shouldn’t he reap the rewards? He told me that he’s not taking money from poor people – he’s only taking from the ocean, and it’s a big place.
It’s dangerous work, too (and not just because of the way he dives). There are rival poaching groups on the south/east and west coasts, and a police crackdown on the west coast has brought “boatloads” of their poachers across to this side of the world. Shots have been fired, cylinders have been filled with water (hence at least some of the rust), and a simmering atmosphere of impending violent conflict has arisen.
This was the first time that I’d talked to a poacher, and it gave me a lot to think about. This is a world that we don’t necessarily have any insight into as recreational scuba divers, even though we know that what the poachers do is wrong.
Clare and I have seen poachers once or twice before, filling cylinders or buying gear (lots of it, expensive stuff) from dive shops all over. I’ve also seen more than one at Miller’s Point, early in the morning. One tried to sell me his dive gear for money to get home, because his friends had left him alone at the slipway wearing nothing but a wetsuit and his trenchcoat.
You may wonder why I am mentioning this. No one talks about it in the dive industry because it’s awkward and poachers have a lot of cash to spend on gear and air fills. But there is value in looking at hard issues. Tomorrow there is some more reading about abalone poaching, and it’s very thought provoking!
Last weekend the first ever Cape Town Dive Festival was held at Miller’s Point. We could not have asked for better weather on Saturday and the entire event was a huge success. All the local dive centres, training schools and boat charters pulled together and made this an event not to be missed. Every little detail was covered. We even had hot showers on the slipway for cold divers. Well done to all that participated and a big thanks to all the divers that supported the event.
Flat calm seas on Saturday morning
The season has kicked off in a big way for us we and we have been running courses almost every day for the last two weeks. The conditions in the bay are great right now despite the water fluctuating between 13 – 15 degrees. We are expecting 25 degrees air temperature this weekend so summer is most definitely around the corner. For those that still need to do a few dives to complete their courses started before the cold set in, dust off your manual, and give me a shout so we can get going. There is a long weekend around the corner so if you do not have plans to go away, go diving.
Sponsor gazebos at the dive festival
Relocation
Finally we have relocated to the South Peninsula and it now takes 3 minutes to get to the beach… Less if you speed (which I can’t really, and specially not towing the boat)!
The new classroom is taking shape and the equipment we use is now no longer tucked away in boxes every day, it is instead all neatly stored and easy to access. Pictures to follow as we make progress. We are very happy here already. Please feel free to follow us home (not like a stalker please) after your dives to check the new place out!
Sleeping seal at the slipway
This weekend
Tomorrow is not technically weekend but we are doing two dives tomorrow for Advanced students, Nitrox dives on Saturday for the Nitrox Specialty students and starting a new Open Water course on Sunday.
I will launch both days this weekend and Saturday will be a deep dive followed by a wreck dive, while Sunday will be Partridge Point and sevengill cowsharks.
