There are thousands of buoys and satellites monitoring the ocean and its weather patterns. Here’s a smattering of the data collected from these sources:
NASA Winds project – measuring ocean winds from space.
SeamountsOnline – an information system on seamount biology.
NOAA’s Vents Program – conducting research on the thermal vents located on the sea floor, and suboceanic volcanic activity. There are creatures living far, far under the ocean in conditions previously thought to be completely out of the question for life to exist.
International Arctic Buoy Program maintains a network of drifting buoys in the Arctic Ocean, providing information for climate research amongst other things.
IFREMER, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea does research and monitoring of coastal waters as well as making recommendations for management of ocean resources.
There’s a ton of information on the Artic Passages of Franklin and Amundsen here at the PBS NOVA site. This is a fascinating and inspiring slice of history.
Robert Ballard’s Titanic: Exploring the Greatest of All Lost Ships – Robert D. Ballard
Robert Ballard’s Titanic
The Titanic sank in the early hours 15 April 1912, just four days into her maiden voyage. She was a state of the art vessel for her time, of colossal dimensions, outfitted in the utmost luxury (for the first class passengers, at least), and carrying over 2,200 passengers and crew. Over 1,500 people died when she sank – mainly men, as the lifeboats (which were only sufficient to save about 1,200 people, and many of which departed half empty) were filled with women and children first.
There’s something totally fascinating about shipwrecks. There is a thrill to exploring something as massive as a ship, rendered immobile on the sea floor. The Titanic lay undisturbed until 1985, when she was located after a joint search by the French IFREMER and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in the USA. Others had searched, and even claimed to have found the ship, but the Woods Hole expedition was the first one to bring back photographic evidence.
The expedition was jointly led by Robert Ballard of WHOI, and Jean-Louis Michel of IFREMER. They used what was then up to the minute submersible technology, both manned and unmanned. Part of the fascination of reading Ballard’s account is to realise to what degree imaging systems have improved in the last quarter century, and what an achievement it was to document the ship given the available technology and the inhospitable environment (pitch dark, 4 kilometres under the ocean in a howling current) it lies in. He speaks of the floor of the submersible being “littered with spent video cassettes” after a successful dive. Video cassettes? I haven’t seen one of those for years!
The book is illustrated with many photos taken during the search and exploration of the wreck, as well as gorgeous artist’s renderings of the entire superstructure (it’s broken into two pieces) with corresponding plans of what goes where. It’s a fascinating read, and also quite eery. Ballard approaches the wreck with great respect and strong awareness that it is the grave of over a thousand souls, and the darkness and quiet of the undersea world that it rests in adds an air of solemnity to the images and descriptions.
The detail about what has decayed (all the wood except for hard woods like teak, and all human remains except for leather shoes, for example) and what has remained and in what condition, is fascinating. Iron-eating bacteria have polished and thinned parts of the hull, which is covered in rusticles comprising oxidised iron intermingled with colonies of these bacteria.
Thousands of artefacts have been retrieved from the wreck site over the years by subsequent visitors, including a 17 ton section of the hull. Ballard states that in his view, however, the wreck has no archaeological value. Unlike a 2,000 year old Phoenician shipwreck in the Mediterranean, we know exactly who and what was on RMS Titanic. We have the blueprints of the ship, and photographs taken of her and on her. What’s more, relatives of those who perished on board are still alive, and we are within a generation of actual memories of the survivors and casualties.
Woods Hole is currently participating in another expedition to document and explore the wreck site – there is a really cool website for Expedition Titanic.
The book is available here. It’s a fairly large-format paperback with several fold-out pages of diagrams and paintings.
You may be wondering what the railroad repairs have to do with diving. Well, the ocean is an amazing place in that whenever something new is dropped into it permanently, a diverse array of creatures quickly colonise it and make homes.
I followed the sinking of two barges of the coast of the Cape Vidal area a few years back and the wrecks were visited monthly by divers for the purpose of establishing what would find its way there. Several kilometres away from the nearest reef, month by month new species zoned in on these barges and have now made them home.
The repairs to the railroad near Simon’s Town will offer the same opportunity for many creatures. Long sections of narrow sandy beach are being covered with trucked in rocks to protect the rail lines from the sea and there are now several hundred meters of “new” reef area for the ocean’s creatures to find homes.
This section of railway line between Glencairn and Simon's Town is under repair
Once work has been completed I want to dive specific sections monthly and film the changes.
The weekend was a real humdinger and we started off with a early boat dive out of Miller’s Point, seven of us all together and we visited the wreck of the SAS Transvaalin Smitswinkel Bay. The wreck, 94 metres long, lies in 34 metres of water and the top of the deck is at about 29 metres. Once we were down we dispensed with the deep skills for the guys doing their Advanced course and then cruised down the length of the wreck to the stern before starting back up to the dive boat.
SAS Transvaal in Smitswinkel Bay
Besides the good viz of about 8–10 metres we were honored with three Southern Right whales waiting for us when we surfaced. There are more photos on the blog and Facebook of these huge whales and tiny divers less than 50 metres apart. The whales don’t know the 300 metres regulations and we were forced to back away from them as they were totally oblivious of us. Coming face to face with such a majestic creature, in its own environment, relaxed and content to have us gawking is one of the many reasons diving is so rewarding. We were treated to them fluking, blowing broad V-shaped water fountains and diving around us. I would guess they were around 12 – 16 metres long. That is a lot bigger than the 9 metre rubber duck we were on. The skipperwas quick to get everyone on board and back slowly away from them.
Southern Right whales and divers in Smitswinkel Bay
Fisherman’s Beach
Urchins at Fisherman’s Beach
The day got even better and after lunch we dived and explored the site called Fisherman’s Beach or sometimes called Froggy Pond. Clean white sand, an easy entry and several clusters of rocky reef make this an amazing site. We found a crevice in a small swim through that is home to a huge octopus and and he was very wary of us as I was on the one side of the opening trying to get a picture and Justin was on the other side peeking in. We were also treated to a very amusing feeding frenzy by a school of Fransmadam. I picked up a piece of kelp root and broke it into little pieces and they went wild snatching pieces from each other.
Coraline algae and other life encrusting a kelp stem
Long Beach
Door in the floor at Long Beach
Today we dived at Long Beach and were able to confirm the hiding place of the pyjama catsharks with a photo. They are primarily nocturnal but are sometimes seen in the day. Over the last few weeks I have seen them in a small hideout a few times, never really sure of what I was seeing as it is a small opening. Today I put my video light in the opening and and held my camera in the entrance and took a few photos. They were sleeping stacked on top of one another.
We saw quite a few sea jellies, of different varieties, and lots of fish. It seems to be breeding season, as I also spotted a teeming mass of about 30 warty pleurobranchs the size of my fingernail – perhaps they had just hatched.
We were joined by Alexandra who has recently moved to Cape Town and has done lots of warm water diving. So the chilly Cape waters came as a bit of a shock!
I have students on Saturday and Sunday starting their Open Water course, but we will start after lunch so I am planning another wreck dive to one of the other wrecks in Smitswinkel Bay on Saturday morning. With boat dives I need confirmation by Wednesday night.
For the group joining me in Sodwana don’t forget the dinner on Tuesday for final planning.
Have a good week and try and get wet, it beats sitting behind a desk, tell your boss you need a day of aquatic therapy, then come and dive, you will feel better the next day!!!
Permits: All divers need a permit, so please get yours at a post office near you.
On Saturday last week we participated in the OMSAC underwater coastal clean up in Murray’s Bay Harbour on Robben Island. The weather was magnificent – we had awesome boat rides there and back on the old Robben Island ferry, crusing in between moored container ships and spotting seals.
The Old Mutual Sub Aqua Club organisers had done a fantastic job, and the Metro Rescue team was on hand in their rubber duck. They laid a line down in the harbour demarcating the area in which we were to start the dive (since the regular ferry was still going to be in and out, we had to take care). Entry was via a giant stride off the bottom of some steps in the pier… As it was low tide, the stride was pretty giant. My first time, and lots of fun!
This is our entry point... Duck waddle down the steps, and giant stride off the edge!
Once we were in the water, however, it was a different story. Armed with kitchen scissors (the biggest adventure my lowly pair has ever had), knives and mesh bags to collect rubbish, we were to scour the harbour bottom for debris. Visibility, however, was appalling. So appalling that I spent much of the dive in a state of abject terror – at times it went down to zero, and I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face. I held onto Tony most of the time, and couldn’t even see the far side of his body. We surfaced once or twice for fear of crashing into the harbour wall without seeing it, and descending again was frightening because I didn’t know what was beneath me and had no sense of depth.
Murray's Bay Harbour at Robben Island, with our entry point to the right of the jetty, and our exit point to the left between the ships.
The bottom of the harbour is mainly covered with very fine white sand, and the water is permeated with it. There’s also a disturbing suction effect in parts of the harbour – one feels as though you could sink quite deep into the sand if you put your mind to it. In the part of the harbour where the new ferry docks, there’s quite a lot of ridged, smooth rock on the bottom, overgrown with sea plants.
We didn’t see much life – I am sure it’s there, but the visibility precluded much underwater naturalism. On the surface I spotted a night light sea jelly, and Tony saw a puffadder shyshark. Bank and Cape cormorant nest on the breakwater at the entrance to the harbour – we were cautioned against disturbing them.
Cormorants nesting on the breakwater at Murray's Bay Harbour
Tony had decided against bringing his underwater camera because we thought were supposed to be cleaning up, not shooting photos, and at first he was kicking himself because every second diver had brought theirs… However, after seeing the water conditions, we realised he was not missing out on anything!
The harbour was built in 1939 along with an airstrip and gun batteries for military purposes. It’s not a very busy place nowadays – the only real traffic is the Robben Island ferry a few times a day. Tourists don’t hang about there much either – they get whisked away on tours – so there’s not that much opportunity for them to drop litter into the water or let their chip packets blow away. Despite that, I was expecting a lot more rubbish than we found. Part of it was the poor visibility, but we didn’t see a lot of junk at all. Some awesome old cooldrink bottles were found, some net, plastic bags and bottles, and a few other bits of bric a brac.
Dive date: 18 September 2010
Air temperature: 24 degrees
Water temperature: 14 degrees
Maximum depth: 5.5 metres
Visibility: 0.3 metres (not kidding – an optimistic estimate)
Dive duration: 33 minutes (that’s time underwater)
That's Tony and me toting our gear down the jetty after the dive
There’s a gallery of more photos up on the OMSAC website.
I’ve mentioned Peter Southwood a couple of times, in the context of a set of web pages that he’s largely responsible for. It’s on the Wikivoyage website, which (like Wikipedia) is a collaborative project where many contributors work together to create something useful. In this case, the something useful is a worldwide travel guide.
Peter’s project is to catalogue the dive sites of South Africa. The area that has received most attention thus far is the Cape Peninsula and False Bay – he has a list of the dive sites in each area, and most of the Cape Town have at least a skeleton article in place.
There is a detailed article on Diving in South Africa, and one for Diving the Cape Peninsula and False Bay. The introductory article lists dive operators, describes local climate, weather and sea conditions, lists reference books on the marine life in the area, describes the marine ecology, recommends equipment configurations, covers any legal requirements such as permits, details emergency services available, and provides safety and travel tips. The overview article also lists the dive sites in the area, with links to the detailed page on each site. This information is very useful for tourist divers coming to South Africa, but also contains a host of information useful to the local diver.
Peter Southwood maps the sites in a lot of detail. He has a small polystyrene boat, painted red, with a waterproof container containing a GPS mounted on it. This is towed behind him like a buoy as he dives (often solo) and maps the sites. Particular projects of his with very comprehensive reference pages and detailed maps are Long Beach in Simon’s Town (including a fantastic navigation route that covers a series of highlights of the site), and the Partridge Point area, where a location has been named Peter’s Pinnacles in his honour.
The dive site pages are very comprehensive, covering everything you could possibly wish to know about each area:
position (GPS co-ordinates are usually given)
naming convention and origins of the name of the location
depth
visibility – what the usual range is
bottom topography and composition
expected conditions, including tips on when it’s good to dive there
access information (boat or shore, with detail on the entry point if it’s a shore dive)
facilities on site (for shore dives) such as parking, restrooms and showers
marine life in the area
features of the site – caves, overhangs, pinnacles, air traps and so on
photography information – what equipment is recommended, and what subjects are promising
routes around the site
hazards
recommended equipment (e.g. an SMB, a light, etc.)
required skills to dive the site – sometimes relatively shallow sites are only suitable for more advanced or experienced divers… Shark Alley comes to mind!
The Cape Peninsula and False Bay wikivoyage page is Tony’s and my go-to guide whenever we want to dive a new site, as well as a good reference to familiar places. Even the articles on well-known sites give new insights or tips on what can be found there. The evolving nature of the online medium means that we check back often for updates and improvements to the articles. The Partridge Point article is a case in point – it’s undergone huge development in recent months.
This project deserves as much publicity as it can get – it’s incredibly impressive and useful, and reflects years of work on the part of Peter Southwood. The fact that he has made it freely available online is very generous. What’s more, the collaborative nature of the site it’s hosted on means that other divers can create accounts and contribute to the detailed information already there.
Tony has been eyeing the pipeline just south of the Lower North Battery (that collection of navy buildings with gun turrets on the Main Road just before you get into Simon’s Town) for some time. It’s north of Long Beach and further north than the wreck of the Brunswick. Even though I was coming down with what turned out to be a vicious bout of flu, I was determined to get in the water (I reckoned I was getting sick anyway…) so we went exploring one Sunday morning in midwinter.
We parked the cars on the southern side of the North Battery – there’s a little driveway and we pulled them out of the way onto the grass (here it is on Google Maps). There’s also space for just one car, pulled right off the road, right above the entry point. From there it’s a bit of a walk along the pavement, down a slope, over the railway line and then down to where the pipeline starts. You can see the single-car space next to the piece of fence, and below it the start of the pipeline to the left of the rocky outcrop in this image from Google Maps.
The entry isn’t too bad. There’s a barnacle-encrusted concrete promontory that we sat on to put our fins on, and then (theoretically) dropped forwards into the water, which was just over waist deep. While putting on my fins I got washed over backwards onto the wrong side of the promontory (thank you for my thick wetsuit!) but that turned out to be fine, as it was sheltered, and eventually I managed to get clear of the swell and kelp with a little bit of effort.
North Battery Pipeline entry point
We followed the pipeline straight out to sea. It’s not very long, but quite undisturbed, with lots of abalone and rock lobsters. There are one or two leaks in the pipeline, emitting a brownish liquid whose origins we preferred not to speculate on… it looked warm, or oily, because it shimmered a bit before mixing with the surrounding water. Tony thought it might be mountain water (tannins causing the brown colour). Hope so. Right at the end of the pipeline the visibility got really poor from all the stuff flowing out, so we turned south.
It’s all sand south of the pipeline, with lots of beautiful anemones and countless sluggish puffer fish buried in the sand. We turned after a hundred metres or so, and swam back closer in to shore. There we found what looks like the remains of a ship – four or five big rusty bits of iron sticking out of the sand in relatively shallow water. I don’t think it’s part of the Brunswick – I think we were too far north – but it could be.
Verdict: Glad we checked it out. Lots to see on the pipeline (good for macro photography) but be careful about the poor visibility at places. Curious about the bits of ship (I assume) inshore, south of the pipeline.
There is just something so intriguing about diving a wreck and this need not be limited to ships alone. This tank wreck in the Red Sea is an amazing dive.
This tank was placed as an artificial reef by order of the King of Jordan, who is a diving fanatic!
Wrecks all have a story to tell. Some are there from navigational errors (like the Kakapo on Long Beach, Noordhoek), some from mechanical faults, some from war battles (like the HNMS Bato off Long Beach, Simon’s Town), many of them as a result of bad weather (like the Clan Stuart) and some wrecks are the result of a planned scuttling to form an artificial reef (for example, the Smitswinkel Bay wrecks).
No matter how it got there, exploring a wreck is fascinating and within months of its arrival marine life forms move in and make the nooks and crannies home. Corals, sponges, sea anemones – to name a few – all appear and grow within months of the wreck’s arrival. Wrecks can sometimes become home to more species than you see on a nearby reef purely due to the wreck’s size, giving juveniles far more protection from rough weather than a reef can.
Despite the allure of the many opening and overhangs, wreck diving has its own set of hazards and without proper training it is important to stay out of any overhead environments. It is also critical to avoid becoming entangled in the myriad of cables, ropes, chains and often fishing tackle that can sometimes be draped over a wreck. When you start wreck diving you will most likely be content to swim around the outside and be awed by the size of some wrecks, once majestically sailing the seas, brightly painted and full of noise and life. Now they lie silent, rusty and overgrown, but still teeming with life.
A powerful dive light is a must if you want to peer inside holes and hatches, but be wary as your light can often disturb some huge creature who will buzz by you startled and dazed by your light, as you are blocking the exit.
We’ve driven past Fisherman’s Beach countless times on our way to stalk the baboons at Miller’s Point, and it’s been on the to do list to dive for a while. We’d heard that it was an easy dive akin to Long Beach, and a good training venue. Also, the little wave breaking on the bright white sand makes it look almost tropical – very inviting.
We ended up diving it the same day as we checked out Sunny Cove. It’s very pretty, with low rocky reefs on either side of the beach, and a wide strip of sand across the middle. There’s lots to explore, and it certainly isn’t as busy as Long Beach. It’s a short hop down the coast to A Frame, and the marine life is thus very similar. There’s a little bit of kelp, but it’s not dense and because of the layout of the site one tends to swim around rather than through it.
Tony’s camera misted up a bit in the warm car between dives, so he didn’t take many photos, but the invertebrate life poses very nicely and there is a lot of colour and light owing to the shallowness of the site.
Fisherman’s Beach is quite exposed, far more so than Long Beach, and we’ve seen that the wave on the beach can get angry in a big swell. Also, there’s a lot of fine sand in between the rocks, and I’d imagine this can get stirred up and decrease visibility quite a lot in inclement conditions. Even some of my careless fin kicks enveloped me in a cloud of particles – so this is perhaps a good place to take more advanced students (for dives three and four of an Open Water Course, for example).
There is parking across the road, and space to kit up on the pavement or on the grass above the beach. There is an easy staircase down to the sand, and although there is more wave activity than Long Beach most of the time, it’s not as intimidating as the Clan Stuart can be.
Fisherman’s Beach – walk down the beach and into the sea
Verdict: Potentially a good training site, well suited for macro photography, and an easy equipment testing location for when Long Beach is too busy or too familiar.
Tony has been wanting to dive Sunny Cove practically since he first set foot in Cape Town, having read in an old book on South African dive spots (The Dive Sites of South Africa – Anton Koornhof) that seahorses had been found there in the sea grass. Tony loves seahorses.
I put my foot down, repeatedly, until it was the dead of winter and the Sharkspotters website told me that not a single great white had been seen patrolling the coast for a couple of months. Sunny Cove is at the end of Jagger Walk, the catwalk that runs along the western edge of Fish Hoek Bay. It’s the site of at least one fatal munching by a great white, and I didn’t want to take any chances.
View from the bridge over the railway line towards the dive site
It’s a shore entry, and we parked on the road at the bottom of the steps over the railway line. It’s quite a strenuous walk over the bridge with all your kit on. We spent a while figuring out where to get in – you have to clamber over some rocks, and make your way through dense kelp before getting to a clear spot. Once we decided where to get in, we were glad to be wearing thick wetsuits, otherwise we would have been scraped and scratched quite liberally! There is a huge submerged concrete block just where we got in – at first I tried to swim over it, but realised it was in only a few centimetres of water, and made my way around it. (Fortunately there was no one on the shore with a camera!) Cape Town shore diving is hard on your kit.
Our entry point is on the far left, almost out of the photo, where the straight piece of rock sticks out.
The actual dive site is aptly named. The sun streams in through the kelp, and the sea floor looks a lot like Shark Alley near Pyramid Rock – lots and lots of urchins, with pink-encrusted rock formations. We saw a little bit of sea grass, and spent a lot of time examining it for signs of life, but didn’t even find a pipe fish, let alone seahorses! There’s a lot of invertebrate life on the rocks – feather stars, brittle stars, abalone – and we saw quite a few fish.
We did see the deep channel that the sharks probably use to get in and out of Fish Hoek Bay. We were hoping to spot the beacon that records movements by tagged sharks past Sunny Cove, but no luck there. We did not explore much to the south of our entry point – that’s on the to do list (along with more sea horse hunting) for another shark-free day.
Verdict: Shallow, easy dive but a fairly tricky entry and exit. Infrequently dived, so rather more lush and unspoiled than busier sites. Videos of our dive are here and here.
