Richard Ellis, author and artist of all things oceanic, turns his attention to the giant squid. This creature has never been observed in the wild, which makes this book a frustrating read in some respects (through no fault of Ellis’s). They have washed up with some regularity on beaches around the world, and have been seen on the surface on occasion.
They can grow to epic proportions, and with their grasping tentacles and huge eyes they have captured the imagination of authors and filmmakers with great vigour. Ellis looks at the giant squid in popular culture – chapters which didn’t grip me as much as the biology, behaviour (speculated) and habitat chapters did. He also deals with the mortal enemy of the giant squid, namely the sperm whale.
Unlike other squid, giant squid are neutrally buoyant and thus don’t need to swim all the time. To achieve this their bodies are full of ammonia, which is lighter than water but makes their flesh taste awful. Squid in general have incredibly thick nerves (up to 100 times thicker than humans) which facilitates their almost instantaneous reaction times – and being able to swim in either direction helps. They don’t have a “front” and “back” as such! They are speculated to remain stationary in the ocean depths, waiting to surprise their prey.
Given that his subject is so elusive and that (despite there being many people who study giant squid for a living) much of the material on its lifestyle is speculative, Ellis doesn’t have a lot to work with here, but he does an incredibly good job of illuminating the current state of giant squid research. This is a fascinating read.
Maidstone Rock is an infrequently-dived site in the offshore region of Seaforth and Boulders Beach. The boat rides from Miller’s Point or Long Beach are only a few minutes (shorter from Long Beach). Grant took us to an area of the reef that is newly discovered, so we got to explore some virgin territory.
Silvertip nudibranch
Pyjama catshark on the reef
Catshark egg on a sea fan
Blue gas flame nudibranch
Cuttlefish in hiding
Octopus in hiding
Klipfish in disguise
The reef is characteristic of the others we have dived in the area, with low rocky outcrops heavily encrusted with invertebrates. We found a small anchor and rope, but they had obviously been in the water for a long time and were almost unrecognisable.
Brass valve handle in situ
I found an old brass valve handle or similar (treasure!), which Tony is cleaning up with diluted pool acid, tartaric acid and lots of patience, and we also came across a large (perhaps one metre diameter) brass or other metal ring that looked a bit like a truck tyre without sidewalls. It is heavily overgrown with feather stars and other invertebrate life.
Mysterious metal ring
Resting klipfish
Ornate amphipods
Granular sea star
I also found several well-camouflaged klipfish. Unlike our confident friends at Long Beach, these klipfish were hiding in crevices in the rocks and generally trying not to be seen.
Strawberry sea anemones
Dive date: 5 June 2011
Air temperature: 23 degrees
Water temperature: 15 degrees
Maximum depth: 25.1 metres
Visibility: 10 metres
Dive duration: 39 minutes
Tony at the safety stop with the valve handle on his reelDiver ascending past an SMB
Here’s a clip I made after a beautiful dive at Long Beach in Simon’s Town. I spent a lot of time with a curious octopus, and with a friendly super klipfish who wanted to play (his friends came to check me out too). Look out for the gorgeous pink anemone and barehead gobies under the barge wreck. There is a FIFA World Cup 2010 cap that is full of feather stars, some lovely starfish, and a bluefin gurnard right at the end.
On Friday we launched from OPBC and dived the wreck of the Matapan. This is an old fishing trawler lost since 1960. Peter Southwood has put up a lot of info on Wikivoyage. The sun shone all day, there was very little wind and 14 degree water. Seeing the city and the Waterfront, not to mention the mountain, from the ocean is quite special.
The Pietermaritzburg lies tilted steeply
View across the deck of the Pietermaritzburg
Klipfish on the SAS Pietermaritzburg
Cuttlefish on the SAS Pietermaritzburg
On Saturday a bunch of us attended the well organised OMSAC Treasure Hunt. We dived the wreck of the SAS Pietermaritzburg and had really good visibility and 14 degree water.
Broadnose sevengill cowshark at Shark Alley
The second dive was to Shark Alley in front of Pyramid Rock, and had milky visibility but lots of cowsharks. Last time we dived there we saw a shark with a hook in its mouth, sticking out the left side and all encrusted. We saw this same shark over a year ago when the hook was shiny clean. Imagine the trauma having this huge thing in your face. Made of stainless steel, these hooks do not corrode and fall off, and may be there for years. On this dive we saw another shark with a hook out the left side of its face. It is still shiny and new but does not look like it is a pain free attachment.
Cecil’s head emerging from a hole in the Aster
Sunday morning we launched from Hout Bay and dived the wreck of the MV Aster, scuttled in 1997 by divers for diving and we were lucky to spot this blue eyed head sticking out of a hatch. We also watched bubbles coming out of strange places as Peter Southwood did a penetration into the bowels of the ship.
Cecil ascending next to the mast of the Aster
Superstructure of the Aster
Wreckage near the bow of the Aster
Anemone on the Aster
Once back on land we drove off to Long Beach to continue an Open Water course.
A warty pleurobranch channelling Yoda from Star Wars
Monday we were back at Long Beach for more student dives so four days of 14 degree water and nice visibility had me in a good mood. After the students were done I popped out to visit the artificial reef we have been building. I was in the water there again today and the conditions are very good, with lots of life around.
Bold klipfish on the pipeline at Long Beach
Weekend diving
On Saturday I am continuing with an Open Water course at Long Beach, and on Sunday we’ll be doing some shore dives – hopefully at A Frame and the Clan Stuart, conditions permitting. Please let me know in good time if you’d like to join in.
James and Claire gave me the xkcdbook for my birthday this year. It’s unashamedly geeky humour, and I love this particular cartoon (not in the book) so much that I’d consider getting it tattooed on my back.
Okay, not really, but I do like it very, very much!
If you’ve ever driven to Simon’s Town along the False Bay coastal road, you’ll have passed the wreck of the SS Clan Stuart on your left. The engine block sticks out of the water at low tide, and only the highest spring tides come close to covering it. The steamer ran aground during a summer gale in late 1914 after dragging her anchor. She was carrying a cargo of coal, all of which was salvaged I think.
Tony getting the gear ready before the dive
The site is quite exposed, and will never boast 20 metre visibility, but on a good day with a calm sea, low swell and the correct prevailing wind direction you can be very lucky (as we were)! The entry is quite hard work. The one we usually use is to park on the roadside outside the old oil refinery and naval graveyard, and kit up there. Walk across the road, climb the low brick wall and find a route down the dunes to the railway line. Take care as the railway line is now in use. Cross the tracks and use the large cement walkway/staircase to get down to the beach. The last step is high – I found it easier to go left over the big boulders on the way down, but on the way up this is too difficult.
Iron ribs
Scattered wreckage
Broken decking
The interior of the hull
The hull viewed from outside
Scattered wreckage of the Clan Stuart
The engine block
Tony films fish under the boiler (his light on the right)
Inside the hull
The ribs of the hull
A bollard
View down the inside of the wreck
Once on the beach, you can walk to opposite the engine block. The wreck runs nearly parallel with the shore about 40 metres in each direction from the engine block, so you’ll actually hit it almost certainly, wherever you get in. Watch out for the wave on the beach – sometimes it looks small, but with scuba kit on your back you’re heavy and unstable and in a big swell you can get nicely tumbled. Make sure your BCD is inflated before you brave the breakers – you might even want to go so far as to put your regulator in your mouth before you set out. As soon as you are through the waves, put your fins on and swim out into deeper water away from the surf zone. Don’t mess around here – it can spoil (or prematurely terminate) your dive!
Onefin electric ray
The Clan Stuart was made of iron, and although she’s very broken up, much of her remains. The remains of boilers can be seen next to the engine block, and the ribs of the ship are clearly visible as you swim along her length. There are ragged bits of metal decking, and some bollards are clearly visible on the edges of the wreckage.
A fat peanut worm
Anemone on a piece of hull
Stripy anemone in the wreckage
Blacktail seabream schooling above the wreck
Silvertip nudibranch
Octopus under the hull plates
Very well-camouflaged speckled klipfish
There is a lot to see here – beautiful invertebrate life – abalone, mussels, sea cucumbers, nudibranchs, worms – schools of fish (we saw blacktail seabream), shysharks, and of course the pleasure of swimming the length of a shipwreck! There are also ridges of sandstone to explore, and kelp covers parts of the wreck. Particularly around the engine block, the growth is very dense.
Bollards on the hull
This is a good site for night dives, and seals are often spotted here which is very entertaining. The entry and exit can be a bit of hard work, but it’s well worth it and the depth (maximim 9 metres at high tide) makes it very suitable for training dives.
Kate with the buoy line in top to bottom visibility
This was the sight that we experienced at Long Beach while kitting up for a days diving.
Sunrise at Long Beach
Finally a weekend of diving!!!! We had really good weather this weekend and despite a rather large swell in the Bay the conditions were good. Saturday we spent the morning doing a Divemaster mapping project, the target: a concrete yacht that sank some years ago and that now lies 25 metres inshore of the north western yellow marker buoy at Long Beach. You can read all about it here.
Corne at the surface next to the buoy
Navigating our way out there it suddenly seemed to get a little darker, more so than when the clouds cover the sun and at the same time Corne surfaced to get a bearing only to find the surface covered with hundreds of cormorants. I was waiting at the bottom and was amazed at these birds’ ability to dive, stop suddenly, look around, then swim off. I am not sure who got a bigger fright, them or me, but suddenly they seemed to be everywhere, perhaps our bubbles made them think there was a school of fish they could feast on, but instead they just found neoprene clad divers, way bigger than they could muster so they went off somewhere else. We saw them all again on Sunday, this time further out and from the surface.
Cormorants underwater at Long BeachFlocking cormorants in False Bay
Saturday afternoon five of us were back in the water and whilst swimming around the centre platform of the wreck these klipfish seemed keen on conveying some form of message to us so they all lined up. I never did get to work out what they were trying to say… So much to learn in the ocean.
Row of klipfish
I can honestly say that I cannot remember a dive where I have not seen something new, or a creature I have seen before doing something new. We see warty pleurobranchs ploughing their way over everything lately but on Saturday I saw a few doing acrobatic swimming and performing the most amazing somersaults… So much for me thinking they were like snowploughs… They seem more like circus animals!
Cavorting warty pleurobranchs
Sunday we spent on the boat, the first dive was to Maidstone Rock. Andrew was completing his Advanced course and Gerard and Cecil were … well, only they know! The second launch took us to a new reef discovered by Grant and Peter Southwood called Tivoli Pinnacles, near Roman Rock. Being a new dive site we were possibly the first to see a few amazing features and Clare discovered her first underwater treasure… a hand wheel from either a stem valve or a fuel valve, with a diameter of 120mm and made of brass. It has clearly been in the ocean for some time given the amount of corrosion on the material (a salt water corrosion resistant material). We will clean it up and see what it looks like.
Valve handle at Tivoli PinnaclesCuttlefish at Maidstone Rock
There was also what seemed to be a huge brass ring almost a metre across so this will be a dive site worth exploring further.
Long beaked common dolphin in False Bay
Despite two amazing dives on a flat calm sea with great visibility, the good stuff was not yet over and when we surfaced we were treated to the sight of a flock of I would guess at least a thousand cormorants and then Grant took us for a ride to a point just off the Kalk Bay harbour where we witnessed a pod of around 300–400 Dolphins. All in all a very pleasant day of diving.
This weekend
On Friday I will be doing Discover Scuba Diving students at Long Beach all day, then on Saturday will continue with the Open Water course started last weekend and more DSD students. There are also two promising boat days looming.
Sunday looks good for shore entries and we will dive with the cowsharks if the swell is small or perhaps A Frame and or Sunny Cove.
Congratulations
…are also in order for Kate, who last year in October arrived in Cape Town wanting to learn to dive. By the end of November she had done OpenWater, Advanced, Nitrox specialty, Night Diving specialty and Wreck specialty as well as Rescue and Divemaster. Back in the UK for Christmas she did a Drysuit specialty and an Equipment specialty, and returned here in April to do a Deep specialty and then achieve the highest non professional qualification, Master Scuba Diver. It did not stop here and we dived as often as possible over the last few weeks to get her log book up to 100 dives and today she finished her Instructor course and Instructor Examination in Sodwana and is now officially an Open Water Scuba Instructor. Well done Kate! To achieve this much in such a short period of time takes determination, hard work and commitment.
DAN talks
We attended a DAN talk last week on ears at one of the local dive centres. It was run by DAN SA and we had a doctor talk us through what goes on in the ear and why whilst diving and the importance looking after those pink bits. We also received a free diving emergency booklet that has lots of info on handling diving related issues. These talks will be on a monthly basis and the next one will most likely be about lungs… So if you dive and have lungs… You should be there… It’s free and its very valuable knowledge to have.
If you wish to dive this weekend please text me sooner rather than later because the weather is good and the bookings will fill up.
I think Wonder Reef (or Wonderful Reef) used to be considered separate from the Castor Rock reef. Survey work by the indefatigable Peter Southwood has revealed that it is in fact connected to Castor Rock by a thin neck of rocks. If you look at this map of the area, Wonder Reef is to the south of the Castor Rock area, in the top left hand corner of the map.
Blue gas flame nudibranch with feather stars
Blue gas flame nudibranch
Silvertip nudibranch
Blue gas flame nudibranch
Blue gas flame nudibranch
Blue gas flame nudibranch
Silvertip nudibranch
Blue gas flame nudibranch with cerata visible
We dived this site with Kate and Andrew, who was doing a photography dive for his Advanced course. The water was very green – the colour of an Appletiser bottle and in some of the pictures I took it looks distinctly like a night dive – but I had fun getting some close-up pictures of the very lush and colourful reef life.
Getting the eye from an octopus
The rocks are covered with anemones, feather stars, sea cucumbers, and nudibranchs. I also found an huge octopus – I don’t often spot them anywhere other than Long Beach!
Elegant feather stars
Starfish pile-on!
Striped sea anemone
Anemones among sea squirts
Sea anemones
Striped sea anemone
False plum anemone
Kate was my buddy, and I kept thinking I’d lost her when in fact she was swimming just above me, looking over my shoulder at the things illuminated by my flash. On the way up, Tony and I were visited by a sea jelly. This picture shows you how dirty the surface layer is – it was taken at the safety stop.
We have had some amazing diving days of late. Friday saw conditions at Long Beach that we have been longing for for months. Warm, clean water with an abundance of life. The ocean’s seasons are very interesting aspects of diving for Clare and I, and thanks to Clare’s logbook and amazing photos we have a much better idea now than we had a year ago of what you can find and when.
Pint size octopus at Long Beach
We have been fortunate enough to see tiny octopus, warty pleurobranchs spawning egg ribbons, klipfish mating, huge rays feeding and shysharks having a feeding frenzy. We visited the cowsharks, watched sadly as injured and hooked sharks struggled to adapt to the harm inflicted upon them by man, and watched a juvenile jutjaw and a doublesash butterflyfish grow from 2 centimetres to close to 6 centimetres before they moved off from their tiny safe house to brave the ocean.
Carpet flatworm at Long Beach
On the weekend Clare found a juvenile sole so small and so well camouflaged it almost avoided her beady eyes. We always find something new and interesting in the ocean. We have watched our small artificial reef go from bits of wood and plastic to a small colony of life. The list is endless.
Transparent anemone at Long Beach
Diving at this time of year is not to be missed. (That applies all year round!)
Recent dives
Basket star on Tafelberg Reef
We dived the Atlantic early Sunday, Grant taking us to the yacht wreck on Klein Tafelberg reef. We were looking for depth to continue the Deep Specialty and our maximum depth was 37 metres in 10 degree water with amazing visibility, 15-20 metres. We had to perform a simulated emergency deco stop for 8 minutes and during this time we had seals nipping at Cecil and I, and a jellyfish bonanza. We had a dive time of 36 minutes and we dived on Nitrox.
Cecil and a curious seal
From Hout Bay we dashed to Long Beach to dive with the two Divemaster candidates and continue the Advanced Course doing navigation. Back in the water once more for a Refresher, and home to download the photos. The ocean was warm at Long Beach, 17 degrees, calm and the visibility was 5-6 metres.
Part of the yacht wreck on Tafelberg Reef
Atlantic diving should start to fade soon as the seasons change and the prevailing winds come from the north west. This cleans and cools to False Bay area and the visibility gets better and better.
Side of the pinnacle at Klein Tafelberg
Trips
We are off to Sodwana on Saturday for a four night/six dive trip, and the group, 13 in total, are all looking forward to this. We will post photos and video when we get back. I think we have five or six cameras for this event so there are bound to be loads of good photos.
Planned dives
We are hoping to book two launches for the Friday after we return from Sodwana, that being Easter Friday and booking is essential. We will plan to go to a wreck for the first dive and possibly a barge wreck or reef for the second launch. I need to give Grant some numbers before I leave for Sodwana so please let me know as soon as possible.
Courses
I am starting a new Deep Specialty course as soon as we get back from travelling. It’s a good idea to do the enriched air/Nitrox specialty at the same time. This combination qualifies you to dive to 40 metres, and gives you longer bottom times and safer diving.
The Art of Diving – Nick Hanna & Alexander Mustard
The Art of Diving
Tony gave me this book out of his collection when I was lying in bed with a cold, needing entertainment. It’s hard to pinpoint the genre. The best part of the book is the magnificent photography by Alexander Mustard – not all of his pictures are to my taste (I don’t much like motion blur) but in general his contribution is magnificent.
The text deals with the history of scuba diving, as well as tips for improving your skills. These can be distilled into relax, slow down your breathing, and swim slower! Hanna meditates on different sea creatures that have been demonised in literature and film – sharks, rays, octopus, moray eels – and shows how these perceptions are wrong. Michael Rutzen, South Africa’s own shark man who free dives with great whites (when a very precise set of conditions are met – he’s extremely careful) also gets a mention.
Hanna also discusses the merits of touching sea creatures, and acknowledges that a complete prohibition may be the best thing given that not all divers have the knowledge and experience to determine when it’s a good idea to reach out or not. He does mention that many creatures, such as morays and groupers (e.g. potato bass) appear to actively enjoy the interaction.
Later sections of the book talk about the intersection of yoga with diving, the practice of yoga before and during dives, and an alleged PADI specialty called Mind, Body and Spirit (MBS) diving which advocates a more meditative approach (only available in the Carribbean – like they need it there!). I am prepared to acknowledge that (perhaps of necesstity – one tank full of air goes further than a lungful) our freediving friends get this right more often than us scuba junkies. Hanna talks about being more mindful underwater, cultivating an attitude of playfulness, and gives suggestions for changing one’s perspective when diving gets too much like a chore. I really liked this section of the book!
The section on free diving is beautifully written and illustrated, and even though the sport doesn’t appeal to me at all, I can see the magic of being so free to move, having to listen so closely to one’s body, and being able to interact silently with creatures who’d be scared away by scuba.
The authors’ official website for the book is here. You can order the book here or here.
