We dived Long Beach on Saturday, and on Sunday went to Atlantis and Maidstone Rock. Conditions were good but then the south easter arrived! On Wednesday we launched in Hout Bay. The swell was around 2.5 metres and the wind started out light but eventually was gusting to closer to 40 km/h. Tafelberg Reef had around 6m visibility and about the same at the Katsu Maru. Below the surface it was okay, but the boat trip was a little hairy.
Strawberry anemones at Maidstone Rock
Weekend plans
This weekend looks really good from a wind point of view, but finding good viz will require going out and looking for it. False Bay and the Atlantic are both very patchy with a whole range of different colours offshore. Our plan is to Launch from Buffels Bay and go and look for viz. We are joining OMSAC for the day and they are going to dive, snorkel and braai.
Sunday will really depend on what the bay delivers on Saturday but I think it will be better at deeper sites like the Fleur and Outer Photographer’s Reef. There is a 14 second, 3 metre swell that will be felt on the shallower sites closer in shore. Sunday may be a day where we just cruise around and look for cleaner viz.
Men of Honor is a contender for the movie with the most stellar cast that you’ve never heard of. Robert de Niro, Cuba Gooding, Jr, and Charlize Theron star in this ficitonalised account of the life of Carl Brashear, the first US Navy African American master diver.
Brashear grew up in poverty and enlisted in the navy 1948, an era during which race relations in the United States were not that dissimilar to race relations in South Africa. He showed dogged persistence in surmounting obstacles far greater than those placed before his white classmates, and successfully qualified as a navy diver in 1954.
Navy divers performed challenging underwater work, retrieving lost nuclear warheads (this happened more often than you’d like to know, during the dawn of the nuclear era), salvage work, repairs to ships, demolitions, clearing harbours, and maintenance (all underwater, of course). In many respects it is much like commercial diving, but with a combat element to it. The underwater scenes are reasonably convincing (except for one shot with a submarine) – suspiciously clear water being my chief complaint, but realism doesn’t always make for good viewing!
This is a highly simplified account of the life of a complex character, but Tony and I both enjoyed rooting for Brashear to overcome the odds and wipe the smirk off various antagonistic establishment characters’ faces. This always happened (no surprises there). Charlize Theron’s role is quite peripheral and, frankly, somewhat confusing. Robert de Niro is always wonderful.
You can get the DVD here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here or here. It wouldn’t be a total waste of an evening, specially if you had popcorn to hand…
I certainly hope that this isn’t the only time I’ll see an ocean sunfish (Mola mola) underwater, but if it is, I can live with that. During a dive in Maori Bay last weekend, exploring the BOS 400 and SS Oakburn shipwrecks, sharp-eyed Liam spotted a large sunfish swimming alongside us, but some distance away. We had advance warning that there were sunfish about (they’d been spotted from the air near Kommetjie, the previous day), so I was mentally and physically prepared with a strategy that I’ve repeatedly rehearsed in my mind to be ready for underwater encounters with marine megafauna.
I switched my camera to video, pointed it at the sunfish, and took off towards it like (I imagined) a bat out of hell. I figured that if I didn’t get close enough to take a proper photo, I would still have a murky video record of the encounter. (Lo and behold, that is all I do have. See below.)
I swam for what felt like a blistering pace for several kilometres (in reality, a sluggish burst of probably 20-30 metres), and then realised that I’d overbreathed my regulator, was taking in quite a bit of water through a tear in the mouthpiece, and that if I didn’t stop finning I’d pass out. During this time the sunfish gained considerable distance on me, got out of focus and out of frame in my video, and then disappeared.
So I stopped, panting, and watched the animal disappear effortlessly into the blue gloom, waving its fins calmly and slowly but – it was clear – moving at a terrific pace. (The overbreathed regulator situation corrected itself swiftly when I started demanding more reasonable amounts of air again.)
I was reminded of other occasions when I’ve tried to keep up with a fish, or a turtle, in order to take its photo or spend just a few more moments in its company. Perhaps there is no shame in being out swum by a fish weighing over a ton with fins to match, but I’ve been humiliated by 30 centimetre long Red Roman, rejecting my friendly advances and outpacing me with a decidedly less impressive fin-to-body size ratio! Next time I want to enjoy the company of an ocean resident for just a little bit longer I’ll try to remember that I’m not in my natural element, and the decision as to whether we get to be close to one another rests almost not at all with me.
We dived out of Hout Bay last weekend, visiting the Oakburn and BOS 400 on one dive, and the kelp forest a bit north of Duiker Island for the second dive. Liam spotted a huge ocean sunfish in Maori Bay while diving the BOS, and Clare chased it (unsuccessfully), filming this dodgy video. Even though the fish is moving its fins at such a leisurely pace, it’s powering through the water. We had beautiful conditions above and below the water, with surprising 15 degree temperatures, and enjoyed our unseasonal Atlantic jaunt.
Loryn descending at Duiker Island
This weekend
We have not had good weekend weather for quite a few weeks this winter, so it’s great to see another warm, windless weekend coming up. We plan to visit some of False Bay’s beautiful reefs, colourful and bursting with life. Atlantis has a couple of shallow pinnacles and a jumble of rocks and pillars that drop down to 27 metres on the sand, if you feel like a deep dive. It’s also perfectly suitable for Open Water divers. We will also do a wreck dive to the SAS Pietermaritzburg on Sunday. This special ship participated in the D-Day landings at Normandy during World War II.
Whale watching trip
We are planning to do a boat based whale watching trip in False Bay with Dave Hurwitz of Simon’s Town Boat Company one weekend in September or early October, depending on availability. Dave is licensed to approach whales to within a few tens of metres, whereas the rest of us mortals must stay 300 metres away from them unless they surface or approach near us, and even then we have to move away as soon as possible.
We did this trip last year and it was a wonderful experience. There is nothing quite like being close enough to a whale to hear it breathe. If you’d like to come along, please let me know before the end of this week, so that we can include you in the planning. The trip is R850 for adults and lasts several hours. For an idea of recent whale activity, check out the Boat Company facebook page.
Punishment
Occasionally divers on our boat will refer to certain items of dive gear as flippers and goggles. This drives me nuts and for a long time I have wondered about a cure. I have one now. All divers will be required to have a credit card on board. Spot fines, or liquid punishment as I would like to call them, will then be issued for transgressions. These can vary wildly but the minor issues such as flipper will carry less of a fine than harsher offences such as requests to “open my oxygen” or “turn me on”. We can also fine the first person to say they are “cold” or “I was sweating underwater”, or uses the word “toasty”. These payments can be made instantly as we now have a credit card machine on the boat.
Weekly nags
You need your MPA permit if you come for a dive in False Bay. I have temporary permits available but it’s much more cost effective to go to the post office and get one that’s valid for a year. Regardless of where we go, you should ideally have a surface marker buoy (SMB) and know how to deploy it, or dive with someone who does (preferably the former).
Saturday: Student dives (casual divers welcome) at Long Beach
Sunday: Launching at 10.30 and 13.00 – Hout Bay if the south easter blows as predicted, otherwise False Bay.
Roman Rock this afternoon
Dive reports
We had good diving today but there was a south easterly swell which could be felt despite it only being around 2 metres. The wind picked up in the afternoon but the morning conditions were good, it was great to have some sun after the last several wet days. The visibility was 4-5 metres and we dived Roman Rock and Ark Rock.
The weekend weather is better than we have had for several weeks so we will dive at Long Beach on Saturday for training, and we will launch on Sunday. Spring low tides mean we need either to launch really early or a bit later than normal, so the plan is to do two dives, at 10.30 and 13.00.
The south easter blew today and is forecast to blow for the next two days, so we may go to Hout Bay for some summer winter diving and dive one of the wrecks there (the BOS 400, the Maori, the Aster or the Katsu Maru), or find a friendly reef to check out. If the wind doesn’t pan out as expected, we will go to Maidstone Rock 10.30 and Ark Rock at 13.00.
Permits and prices
Please make sure you have your permit or you will need to buy a temporary one from us on the boat. The boat dive price is R260 per dive.
We did a beautiful May dive on the Brunswick in crystal clear, cold water, and upon rolling off the boat were greeted immediately with a fairly large group of highly structured jelly like animals, pulsing along as if on a mission to somewhere. They were hard to photograph (my best effort is above) so I took a short video of one of them.
The JellyWatch facebook page helped with identification – they do not appear in any of the marine ID books we own. This species is probably Ocyropsis maculata immaculata, a type of comb jelly that is widely and quite abundantly distributed (although WoRMS doesn’t show it as occuring off the Cape). Apparently (says wikipedia) they use their lobes to escape from danger, clapping them together in order to create a water jet that propels them backwards. They are open ocean animals, which suggests that the lovely clean water we were enjoying right at the north western end of False Bay had been brought in by an upwelling from the deep sea outside the bay, driven by the north westerly winds we’d been having.
They are ctenophores, and instead of stinging cells they have sticky cells called colloblasts that they use to catch food. Every website I’ve looked at mentions what “voracious predators” they are! Other ctenophores that we see locally are comb jellies and sea gooseberries. (More pictures of comb jellies around the Cape Peninsula can be seen here, here and here.) All of these species have little disco lights running along their bodies; this is in fact light being refracted off their eight rows of cilia, which are used for locomotion.
The Clan Stuart is an iron shipwreck that is 100 years old this year. One of the few shipwrecks in Cape Town that is accessible as a shore dive, she is also occasionally dived by boat. Her engine block protrudes from the water at almost all states of the tide – sticking far out at spring low, and almost covered at spring high.
Heavily encrusted engine block of the Clan Stuart
Divers tend to encounter the engine block of the Clan Stuart wreck from below, looming abruptly ahead of them as they traverse the wreck. Anglers view it from the vantage point of the beach, casting their lines in front of and around it. Dog walkers have a similar view. Everyone else sees this piece of False Bay history from the road or train, as they head into Simon’s Town or back towards Fish Hoek. Occasionally navy cadets, snorkelers, or (according to legend) scuba divers after a great white shark sighting will climb on top of the engine block, but for the most part – maybe because of its rough and unwelcoming texture – it’s left to the oyster catchers, gulls, and mussels.
The Clan Stuart engine block seen from a stern facing position
On a rare windless day in False Bay, when the water was calm and surprisingly clean, Tony, Christo and I took a trip out to Mackerel Bay after dropping the divers off at the jetty in Simon’s Town. Tony was in the middle of doing some work on the boat, and wanted to show me how well it was going.
The Clan Stuart engine block
We were able to approach the engine block of the Clan Stuart quite closely. You can see in the photo above that the water was quite clean, and we could see the kelp on the wreck and some of the shallower wreckage. The engine of the ship was a triple expansion steam engine, and the engine block has three separate cylinders in which the hot steam was expanded.
Seaward side of the Clan Stuart engine block
We look forward to seeing the finished Clan Stuart documentary that some local filmmakers and researchers are compiling!
One Sunday in early April, Tony did a very early launch for an Aquaventures PADI IDC, taking the divers to the wreck of the BOS 400 and to dive with seals at Duiker Island in Hout Bay. You can see in the photo above that the sun hasn’t even reached Maori Bay as the divers kit up! The visibility on the BOS 400 was about six metres, and it was about eight metres at Duiker Island. At the wrecks inside Hout Bay (the Aster and Katsu Maru), there were reports of visibility of up to 15 metres.
The BOS 400
Rusty hull of the BOS 400
Close up of the BOS 400
After the early launch, Tony and I took the boat for a drive south towards Cape Point. We weren’t in a rush, partly because we needed to run in the boat’s motors gently, and so we stopped to look at the scenery.
Chapmans Peak drive
Chapmans Peak
Door in the cliff
Rocky cliffs along Chapmans Peak
Chapman’s Peak Drive is carved out of the mountainside at the intersection of the Cape granite and sedimentary layers (geologists love this fact), and this can be seen clearly in areas where the mountain isn’t highly vegetated (such in as the photo above). Tony showed me a strange “door in the cliff” – a neat rectangular opening (it seems) that looks like it should be in The Hobbit. You can’t approach it closely on a boat because there’s foul ground in front of it, and the sea is turbulent even when there’s not much swell.
Sea spray on Long Beach, Noordhoek
Long Beach is long. There were lovely big waves, with spray unfurling from their tops in the light breeze. We could see horse riders on the beach, surfers in the swell, and at one point right across False Bay to the Hottentots Holland and Hangklip. Further down, the boiler of the Kakapo shipwreck was clearly visible on the sand.
Calm seas to Hout Bay
Slangkop lighthouse
Standing in the bow
Big waves rolling in near the Kakapo
Tony on board
View across False Bay from the Atlantic
Idle near a small kelp forest off Long Beach, Kommetjie
Slangkop lighthouse (pardon the blurry photo) is being painted, it seems – the building is completely clad in scaffolding. This was our turning around point, but first we had coffee and a snack. Boating makes you hungry!
Slangkop lighthouse getting a facelift
On the way back we stopped a few times to look around (Tony was looking for a whale shark, after NSRI report from St Helena Bay the previous day, and unconfirmed sightings of one in Kommetjie) and dangle our (ok, my) feet in the freezing water. There was an offshore wind blowing. In places the air was freezing cold, and in others the hot wind, smelling strongly of fynbos, made everything wonderfully pleasant.
Clean water and kelp near Duiker Island
The Sentinel
Cormorants near Duiker Island
We took a drive across the mouth of Hout Bay to Duiker Island, where the water looked quite clean. There were snorkelers in the water with the seals. I drove us back from the island (slowly) – I don’t have a skippers licence yet, and in order to get one I need (supervised) hours on the boat. So this was practice.
The Seal Alert boat is in disrepair
Napping on an outboard
Seal ready to go to sea
Once inside Hout Bay harbour, we milled around a bit waiting for the slipway to clear (some poachers were launching, amongst other activity). We came across the Seal Alert boat, which has sunk into disrepair but is a very enjoyable resting spot for some of the local seals. There are also a few boats that have sunk at their moorings – apparently because their drain plugs were stolen.
Boat out for repair at Hout Bay harbour
Half sunken in Hout Bay harbour
Promising wreck dive in the harbour?
Derelict ships in Hout Bay harbour
Fishing vessels moored in Hout Bay
Divers going out from Hout Bay
The middle (bright green) ship in the picture of the fishing vessels moored in the harbour in the above gallery of images, is the sister ship of a ship that ran aground off Betty’s Bay in February, breaking up and spilling huge amounts of fuel near the vulnerable penguin colony.
On a beautiful day in Hout Bay towards the end of last year, we were entertained by a seal that had caught a west coast rock lobster. The seal spent a lot of time parading around near the boat with his lobster, and we were suitably entertained. We dived the SS Maoriand Die Josie and enjoyed the very mellow surface conditions and warm sun.
Crayfishing seal
The seal with his morning snack
Odette insisted I take this picture of Shane and Christo
Shane, Christo, Odette, Gary, Matthys and Otti on board
I was diving with Open Water students, so Gary skippered for us. On our way back into the harbour we came across the local NSRI station personnel doing towing exercises with their two vessels.
Sunday: two launches either from False Bay Yacht Club or Hout Bay depending on what the Atlantic looks like on Saturday afternoon – but Hout Bay looks more likely.
If we go to Hout Bay we will dive the BOS 400 and the SS Maori, and if it’s False Bay I want to dive with the cowsharks and at Alpha Reef.
False Bay is alive right now and a huge pod of dolphins has been seen almost every day somewhere in the Bay. I was out on the Bay on Tuesday and could see them off in the distance slightly north east of Roman Rock. The viz reports have varied wildly this week from 20 metre viz down to 3 metre viz. We have some south easterly wind the next few days and the kind of conditions that make Hout Bay an appealing option for Sunday.
As usual, text or email me if you want to dive. Sodwana people, remember to make your final payments soon please!
