Eye of the Shoal: A Fishwatcher’s Guide to Life, the Ocean and Everything – Helen Scales
Eye of the Shoal
This is an absolutely wonderful book about fish. Everything about fish. Helen Scales is a marine biologist and the accomplished author of marine-themed books (I previously wrote about Poseidon’s Steed, her book about seahorses).
Here, Scales delves into the world of an animal whose variety seems almost without limit. Her book overflows with wonders, and interweaves science, adventure and mythology to shed light on the under-appreciated inhabitants of the underwater realm.
Unsolicited (this is almost always the case), I read half of this book to Tony while I was busy with it, and it delighted both of us. We learned about bioluminescent fish, poisonous fish, the sounds fish make, and the colours of their skin. We learned about fish that use tools, fish cognition, and about the state of the science regarding whether fish experience pain. We even learned about moray eels and grouper hunting co-operatively.
As a scuba diver, Scales relates tales of dives on which she observed the behaviours and phenomena she describes, and I was inspired to pay more attention to the activities of the fish we see on dives around Cape Town. They may (almost) all be the same colour, but there are certainly things that they do, and fascinating ways of being, that I am failing to appreciate.
Scales provides a bibliography on her website with links to the open access scientific papers that she used to research the book.
Get the book here (South Africa), here (US) or here (UK).
Using the 26 hours of voice recordings recovered from the ship’s deep water resting place after a prolonged search, Rachel Slade is able to reconstruct, in detail, the final voyage of El Faro. Slade also attended the hearings on the sinking held by the US Coast Guard, and interviewed the family and friends of El Faro‘s crew. The result is a detailed and illuminating investigative work that explains the disaster more comprehensively than simply to say that the ship sailed into a hurricane and sank. Slade also emphasises the humanity, connections and personalities of the captain and crew, who otherwise might be lost in the telling as statistics of loss.
The official explanations, and absence of any assumption of culpability for the tragedy, are enraging and frustrating, but illustrate the insidious pressure to take risks that commercial mariners may experience from ship owners and operators. This dynamic plays out at all scales. Even as a small business owner, Tony is sometimes asked to launch his boat in conditions that he deems unsafe. A client may put their own financial gain ahead of the safety of the divers, or of my husband. The risk of such a venture is entirely with the captain and others on the vessel, while the decision-maker (and financial beneficiary of the decision) sits ashore in safety like General Melchett sending his troops to their doom.
Slade’s book is a gripping read, accurately and comprehensively reported, and will appeal to anyone with an interest in maritime drama. It is also of particular interest given that warming oceans will give rise to more storms like Jaoquin, and our ability to forecast their movements with accuracy will, to an increasing degree, impact captains’ ability to keep themselves, their crew and their cargo out of harm’s way.
Do not confuse this book with Into a Raging Sea, the excellent book about South Africa’s National Sea Rescue Institute.
Get Into The Raging Sea here (US), here (UK) or here (South Africa).
William Langewiesche, author of The Outlaw Sea(one of my favourite books) wrote an in-depth article for Vanity Fair, about the sinking of the American cargo ship El Faro, with the loss of all hands on board, in hurricane Jaoquin in 2015. Called the “worst U.S. maritime disaster in three decades”, the loss of El Faro should have been avoidable.
With access to the 26 hours of recordings from the El Faro‘s “black box”, found after an almost year-long search, Langewiesche is able to provide detailed reporting on the hours leading up to the disaster. I found two aspects of the incident incredibly instructive. The sequence of decisions made about where to sail relative to the hurricane, and the culture onboard, seemed worth pondering. Weather forecasting services (a personal obsession) were also key to the fate of the ship to a surprising degree.
It is unlikely that Davidson [the captain] ever fully understood that he had sailed into the eye wall of Joaquin, but he must have realized by now that he had come much too close. As is usually the case, the catastrophe was unfolding because of a combination of factors that had aligned, which included: Davidson’s caution with the home office; his decision to take a straight-line course; the subtle pressures to stick to the schedule; the systematic failure of the forecasts; the persuasiveness of the B.V.S. graphics; the lack of a functioning anemometer; the failure by some to challenge Davidson’s thinking more vigorously; the initial attribution of the ship’s list entirely to the winds; and finally a certain mental inertia that had overcome all of them. This is the stuff of tragedy that can never be completely explained.
Read the full article here. It’s a gripping read by a master storyteller.
Weekend conditions don’t look all that great. Saturday will most likely be best for launching from Hout Bay , or there may be a slight chance of shore dive from Long Beach for students. I will make this decision late tomorrow depending on sea conditions. Let me know if you’re keen to dive.
A heart for you on Valentines day
Sunday is the Cape Peninsula marathon, starting in Green Point and finishing in Simon’s Town, so expect some road closures.
Sea Change: Primal Joy and the Art of Underwater Tracking – Craig Foster & Ross Frylinck
Sea Change
The Sea Change project may be familiar to you from their large format photographic displays, one of which was for a time along the promenade in Sea Point, and is currently in Lamberts Bay. You may have read about the project, or seen its members – ocean-loving filmmakers, journalists, scientists – diving in the cold water of False Bay year round, without wetsuits. You may even have seen the BBC’s Blue Planet II series, in which the filmmakers, guided by Craig Foster and his fellows, captured an incredible octopus sequence filmed on our doorstep in False Bay.
The Sea-Change book has been a long time in the making, and is the product of hours upon hours upon hours spent in the water, observing the animals that call the kelp forests home. The book contains a story of loss and discovery – that of Ross Frylinck – interwoven with large-format photographs of scenes from the kelp forest, taken by filmmaker and naturalist Craig Foster, a co-founder of the Sea-Change project. Foster also provides the captions.
As a diver, it was immediately clear to me that a great deal of patience and close observation was required to gain the deep understanding that Foster has of the smallest creatures living among the kelp. There is no substitute for time in the water. There is no substitute for swimming slowly, deliberately, and for spending extended time looking at one place. The marks that animals leave on rocks, kelp stipes, the sand, and even on each other’s shells, can tell a story.
I learned a huge amount about animal behaviour from this book, and about the interconnectedness of all the elements of the watery, beautiful world around the Cape Peninsula. The photographs are beautiful and striking, capturing moments that one would be extremely lucky to see during the normal course of things. Diving for more than an hour a day, every day of the year, however, makes such things more commonplace.
Sea Change presents a beautiful opportunity for the wider community of ocean lovers to learn from the unique approach taken by the Sea-Change team (this article gives a good sense of it), and to learn how to understand and observe the animals that surround us when we look beneath the surface of the inshore kelp forests. The project also has something to say about how science happens, and the vital connection between science and storytelling. Identifying animals is fun, but – as any veteran twitcher will tell you – the next level is understanding behaviour. This is a challenge I’m happy to take up.
Get a copy here, or directly from the Sea Change team.
After a successful Back a Buddy campaign, Shark Spotters launched their free shark safety smartphone app in the summer of 2016. The app has had excellent uptake by water users of all stripes, but I’d like to draw it to your attention in case you aren’t familiar with the ways in which it can make your beach life better and safer! Whether you’re a surfer, a diver, an ocean swimmer, a beach comber, or someone who looks forward to long summer days under an umbrella on the sand, the Shark Spotters app can make a difference to you.
The list of Shark Spotters beaches
Shark Spotters operate at eight beaches around the Cape Peninsula: four (Muizenberg, St James/Kalk Bay, Fish Hoek & Caves, Kogel Bay) year-round, and another four (Glencairn, Clovelly, Monwabisi and the Hoek, Noordhoek) from October to April, during the warmer months.
The app allows one to set a home beach – you can see from the image above that mine is Fish Hoek – and when you start the app, you’ll get information for your home beach immediately. Tapping on the home beach block at the top of the screen (where it says “Tap for more”) brings one to a series of screens that you can navigate through by swiping the bottom block on the screen.
Information on recent sightings at my home beach
Weather and sea conditions
Information on marine life activity
Information on beach facilities
Beach conditions video
Shark sightings history
The information provided is extensive. You can see information on the last three shark sightings at your home beach, the weather and sea conditions (temperature, wind direction, tides, moon phase, swell), and information on what marine life is in the area. This latter information is not a nice to have so you can look out for dolphins from shore, but an important indicator of the likelihood of a shark being in the area. Dolphins, rays and schools of fish can draw white sharks, while sunfish (and even seals) may be mistaken for a shark when viewed from a distance by an untrained observer.
There’s also information on what facilities are available at the beach, and a short video for each beach, usually taken each morning, showing the prevailing conditions.
All this information is available for all the Shark Spotters beaches, not just your home beach, and you can view a different beach by selecting it from the list that appears under your home beach on the home screen.
Digging into the app, you can find a detailed list of all the recorded shark sightings, and in the settings you can turn notifications of sightings on or off according to your preference. I have them switched on, because I like to be reminded of a world outside the office.
Shark Spotters app menu options
The further menu options, shown above, give you access to a large amount of data about the Shark Spotters program, the exclusion net at Fish Hoek beach, how the flag system works, great white sharks, and more. Most of the menu options also provide links to more detailed information online, if you want to know more.
The forecast today is a little better for the weekend than it was earlier this week. There is some wind and some odd swell and swell direction changes but I believe it should be worth diving both Saturday and Sunday. Sunday will most likely be a little better. I have students on the boat on both days so there is not much space, however, if you are quick you can reserve a spot!
Zandvlei Nature Reserve
Things to do
It’s not as if one needs to actively seek out extra commitments at this time of year, but in case you’re at a loose end check out Wavescape’s Slide Night happening on Monday (you need to book in advance for this). You can get some adult education at UCT’s annual Summer School in January, and there’s something for you whether your interest is sharks or shipwrecks.
The proportion of the world’s oceans that are fished has recently been the subject of two papers in Science, both of which used the same data set to reach different conclusions. One study concluded that 55% of the ocean is affected by fishing, while a follow up (using the original data set, but at finer resolution) concluded that the number is closer to 4%.
A janbruin emerges from a school of fish at Atlantis
Ed Yong of The Atlantic sets out the disagreement, and explains the subtleties and the points of view on each side of the debate. Far from being an insoluble scientific crisis, the divergent findings show the iterative nature of the scientific process and the manner in which back and forth between scientists leads to progress. It brings to light important questions worth considering, ones that are more important than simply asking the original question of how much of the ocean is fished.
Instead, you have to ask different and more refined questions. How much of that fishing is sustainable? Which species are being targeted? How are they faring? Can they bounce back?
We are headed to the Tankwa Karoo for some star (and moon) gazing this weekend, so I won’t be launching. Will see you all next week!
Shark Spotters app
The Shark Spotters mobile app has been nominated for an award for best use of tech by an NGO, and your help with voting would be much appreciated by the team. Go here to vote. It’s a lot of multiple choice votes but five minutes of your time would mean a lot! You can find links to download the very useful Shark Spotters app here.
Saturday: Boat or shore dives – choice to be confirmed tomorrow afternoon
We had a good dive at Long Beach on Sunday – with about 6 metre visibility and 16 degree water, it was a sample of the good winter conditions that False Bay can deliver, but not too cold!
This Saturday looks good for either boat or shore diving. I’ll confirm which tomorrow afternoon after I’ve looked at conditions and seen how the weather has panned out. Let me know if you want to dive.
Klipfish at Long Beach
Marine ecosystems MOOC from UCT
The University of Cape Town has added an online course dealing with large marine ecosystems to the excellent Coursera platform. The course starts on 14 May, but will be repeated every few months. If you’re ocean-curious, this is for you. Sign up here – it’s free, just select the option without a certificate.
