We dived on the Romelia late last year, in very surgy conditions. It wasn’t ideal for videography – you can see the movement of the water, and also that there was a large amount of plankton and also many juvenile fish or larvae from other creatures in the water. Some of the red seaweed looks like it’s blowing in a strong wind!
The wreck is very broken up and covered with urchins and the most enormous and colourful sea anemones. There are lots of boulders with narrow gaps between, fun to swim through. A couple of sea jellies pass by and once we ascended into the red bait zone you can see some curious hottentots passing by. There’s also a very large, four-legged sea star that caught my attention.
Look out for Clare and Cecil in the water, and Grant (in a bright orange jacket), Mauro (in the sunhat), Richard (in his rash vest, looking a bit like Jacques Cousteau) and Belinda (in the background) on the boat once we surface, right on the buoy line.
There is an often repeated joke that there are two types of diver: those who pee in their wetsuits and those who lie about it. Its true to say that having just paid handsomely for a new wetsuit the idea is not to pee in it. However, sooner or later it’s going to happen to you! This is why….
The physiology
Basically, you can’t help yourself. The physiological phenomenon in question is known as immersion diuresis, a term which refers to your body’s response to being under pressure. Blood is shifted to your body’s core because of the cold and pressure on your body, which increases your blood pressure. The hypothalamus gland thinks this means your total fluid volume is too high and tells your kidneys to make urine.
What can you do to avoid immersion diuresis? Avoid diuretics like coffee and other caffeine-rich drinks before you dive! Intentionally not drinking any liquids might seem like a sensible idea, but dehydration predisposes you to decompression sickness and saps your energy.
Try to stay warm. A by-product of your body’s reaction to cold is urine. Wearing a warm chicken vest under your wetsuit may save you from having to empty your bladder while underwater. Make sure you have good gloves, thick booties and a decent hoodie. On the boat, stay out of the wind if you can, wear an anorak and a beanie or cap.
Be sober, healthy, and well rested. Some over-the-counter and prescription medications can interfere with your body’s heat conservation activities, typically by hindering the constriction of blood vessels near the skin. Antihistamines, taken for hayfever and other allergies, are particular culprits as is alcohol. Make sure you are physically fit.
How to avoid it
What can you do to prevent urination on a dive? Drink less water? The counter-intuitive answer is that you should drink more.
Deliberately dehydrating yourself, in the hope you can hold it until you surface and get out of your suit, just makes the problem worse. Because of immersion diuresis and your body’s involuntary reaction to the chilly water, chances are you’ll have to pee anyway. And dehydration makes the result stronger in odor and colour.
If you do have to pee in your wetsuit…
If you’re well-hydrated, your urine will be almost clear and nearly odourless. So it can be your little secret.
There’s no health risk to urinating in your wetsuit. If you’ve watched Survivor or read anything about treating stings from jelly fish and bluebottles, you may recall that urine is sterile, unless you already have a urinary tract infection. The worst you have to fear is a case of nappy rash if the urine stays against your skin for a long time, and this is much less of a problem when your urine is diluted.
Long Beach parking area, the divemobile, and the shower in the background
The solution is to open your wetsuit under water and rinse it between dives, if you can stand the rush of cold water. If you’re at Long Beach for a training dive, there’s a conveniently located shower in the parking area!
This is a French film by Jaques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud. There is a Disney version that is 20 minutes shorter, narrated by Pierce Brosnan, and aimed at young American audiences. Tony and I watched with the French narration and English subtitles.
The narration is sparse, nonsensical, and hard to follow. Fortunately it probably amounts to a page or two of text, and is scattered between large sequences of footage with only the sounds of the sea or a light musical accompaniment. Unlike the BBC Blue Planet documentary, none of the animals on screen are idenfied, nor is their behaviour explained.
Tony and I spent a lot of time wondering how some of the underwater sequences were filmed. State of the art cameras and filming techniques were used, and it shows.
There is incredible footage of marine iguanas, whales of multiple varieties, battling (or mating?) spider crabs, dancing dolphins, schools of gorgeous jellyfish, and a hilarious night sequence involving a grumpy mantis shrimp. I was amazed to see a huge whale swimming over a sandy bottom with only a foot or two to spare under his belly – imagine having such a big body, AND knowing where all of it is at one time! I love the manatee vacuuming the ocean floor, and the cuddling sea lions. There’s a breathtaking sequence showing a diver in scuba swimming along right next to a 4 metre great white shark. The clarity of the water hints that it wasn’t filmed here…
I loved the sequence towards the end of the film, showing various ships engaged in battling colossal waves. The power of the waves is very apparent. The narrative arc, such as it is, is very mixed and patchy, but the images are so compelling this hardly matters.
The film touches on the damage done by purse seine fishing, long-lining and shark finning – that footage in particular is horribly upsetting. From what I can understand from the credits (French) and my googling, this footage was staged and no animals were actually harmed, but this doesn’t detract from how awful it is.
You can order the DVD here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise on Amazon.com.
Long before I knew there was such a thing as scuba diving, I knew about shipwrecks. I grew up in Cape Town, and spent a lot of time in various rock pools, on the local beaches, on the Sea Point promenade, and sitting in the back seat of my parents’ Volkswagen Beetle as we whizzed around the peninsula. Cape Town is shipwreck paradise, and the most visible ones to me were the Antipolis, which sticks a tiny bit out of the water at Oudekraal, and the MV Romelia, which used to be an extremely prominent feature on the Llandudno rocks. I liked the Romelia because it was pink.
A photo of the Romelia, aground on the rocks, taken in 1989
(The picture above is from this website – worth a browse!)
Following Tony and Cecil through a crack
My parents told me the story of the Romelia and the Antipolis often (I liked saying the names, because they sounded romantic and mysterious) – in July 1977 my folks had been married for two years and were living in Cape Town when the tow rope connecting the two vessels to a Japanese tug snapped, and they ran aground independently on the western seaboard of the Cape Peninsula during a winter storm. The Romelia broke in half, and the bow sank, leaving the pretty pink (rusty) stern on the rocks. Later the stern also sank – a great disappointment to me, but no doubt a relief to the owners of the palaces in Llandudno!
Red bait zone and hottentot on the Romelia
I actually had no idea that you could dive on the Romelia, or where it had disappeared to, until the Sunday before Christmas. Our planned boat dive to Die Josie or Tafelberg Reef wasn’t looking like a good idea – reports were that the visibility was pretty poor, and the water was very dark. Grant suggested we go north, around the corner past Maori Bay to the MV Romelia.
Bernita checks out a wall
It’s a gorgeous 12 kilometre boat ride from Hout Bay slipway, past the BOS 400 in Maori Bay, past the nudist beach at Sandy Bay (strangely, everyone we could see was fully clothed!), and to Sunset Rocks on the southern end of Llandudno beach. Grant dropped the shot line quite close to the rocks, where an artificial cave is formed by the bow and some large rocks, with the anchors hanging from the ceiling.
Blue anemone on the Romelia
The visibility was mixed – there were clouds of fry (not sure which species of fish, but they were definitely babies) in the water at points, and the westerly wind of the day before had made things a bit soupy, but as we moved around the site there were patches of very decent visibility. I must confess that we’d been on the wreck for nearly ten minutes when I asked Tony where it was… He pointed at the (in retrospect) suspiciously smooth orange wall we had been hanging in front of since the start of the dive, and I realised that the ship has been so colonised by coraline algae and other sea life that most of it is virtually indistinguishable from the rocks around it.
Gas flame nudibranchs on the Romelia
There are amazing walls – each a different colour. One is mostly orange, another purple, and when you start ascending there are massive sea squirts above about six metres. These are all a rusty reddish brown colour. The rocks and the wreckage – some quite mangled, other sections totally hidden by sea creatures – are heavily encrusted with urchins, sea cucumbers, anemones, nudibranchs, and other invertebrate life. We saw large schools of hottentot in the red bait zone and against some of the walls.
Wall of purple
There are ample opportunities to swim through cracks in the rocks and between the wreck and the rocks, and this demanded good buoyancy control and some smart finning because there was a fair amount of surge. A particularly alluring gap was just too narrow for me, but every time I went close to try and take a photo through it the surge pushed me up perilously close to the wall, and I had to give up.
Another nudibranch on the Romelia
Most of the photos I took are of a macro nature because the visiblity didn’t warrant wide angle shots… You can see in the shots of the divers above that the water was very murky. But there’s also no opportunity really to get a panoramic view of anything because the site is more a series of passages and swim throughs than a giant ship lying on the ocean floor like the Smitswinkel Bay wrecks.
Here’s a video clip from a night dive we did in June this year at Long Beach. Look out for the box jelly with one tentacle, a klipfish, the beaked sandfish digging themselves into the sand, two warty pleurobranchs, an octopus hiding under a piece of plywood, a cuttlefish under the wreck, a two tone fingerfin, and a little jutjaw (we think).
This is an early night effort taken on my Sea&Sea camera with torches instead of a strobe. The resulting hotspots are eliminated when using the Bonica Snapper, provided the light is positioned appropriately.
This blog post recently came to my attention – it’s by Burt Jones and Maurine Shimlock, and in it they talk about why touching marine life is a bad idea. I agree that, as a rule, it is a bad idea, but I don’t think it’s always totally out of the question.
When (I think) it’s ok
Restoration
I must confess that when I see an upside down starfish, crab, or abalone, I turn them back over. Call it interfering with the natural order of things, but I can’t swim by and leave them. I know how uncomfortable I feel when I get stuck somewhere in an awkward position, and I just have to help!
Upside down abalone (I turned him over after taking his picture)
Assisting an injured or entangled animal
A creature that is entangled with fishing line, or has a fish hook in its mouth, for example, is dealing with something completely outside of what nature intended for it to experience. If the animal allows, I think it’s totally appropriate to assist. In the case of a whale, a shark, or a creature that could potentially hurt you (possibly just by virtue of its vast dimensions), this is best left to trained professionals.
Tony assisted with a moray eel that was tangled in fishing line on a dive on the Coopers Light wreck in Durban – he was the only diver in the party who had a knife, and while two others held the eel steady, he was able to cut it free so that it could swim away. When he speaks about this experience, it’s clear that it was pretty life changing for him. And for the eel.
When the animal initiates it
I’ve experienced this a few times, and every time it has ranked among the most incredible diving experiences I’ve had. I’ve had a klipfish swim right up to my face and bump my mask, and then make his way down my arm and glove – rubbing it the way I’ve seen them rub their bodies on the sand, at Long Beach. I’ve been nibbled more than once by fish in the aquariums in Durban and Cape Town. I’ve watched a ray swim so close over fellow divers’ heads that they had to lift up their hands to fend it off. My view is that if the animal wants contact, and if the contact won’t harm me or the animal, it’s fine.
To discourage certain behaviour
I never thought this would really be an issue when diving, but last weekend we had a bit of a scary experience (well, I was scared – not sure about Tony!) with the sevengill cowsharks at Shark Alley. Tony and Tami both had to strike a very persistent shark to persuade it to stop gnawing on my first stage – more than once. This kind of situation is very unusual.
Obviously defending yourself is all right. If you deliberately expose yourself to danger, however, I’m inclined to think you must deal with the consequences!
When (I think) it’s not ok
Because it looks fun
I’d include poking jellyfish in this one! Though it may not seem that way, many sea creatures are more fragile than you’d think. They’re not toys, and interactions whose human to human equivalents would involve nose-pulling and cheek-pinching are not cool. They’re purely an opportunity for you to indulge a desire to break or annoy something. Go annoy your little brother instead!
When it could hurt you
Don’t be like the tourists who get mauled by lions in game parks because they get out of their cars to take photographs, or who stick their hands into animal enclosures because the tiger looks so fluffy, or whatever. Sharks are dangerous, whales are very large and probably not even aware of your presence, and many other marine creatures have stings, spines and poisonous body parts that could harm you. Don’t be silly.
When it could hurt the animal
This isn’t always obvious. Touching coral reefs, for example, is not a good idea. For one thing, coral structures may be very fragile, and your touch could break them. The effect of touch on the live organisms inside the hard framework is not well understood – it seems that light touches do not cause damage (after all, a multitude of creatures swim over and brush against the coral every day) but more aggressive contact can be harmful. The rule is, don’t touch at all, and control your fins and buoyancy!
Fish have a protective mucous layer on their skin. If you touch them with dry hands, you can damage the mucous layer – this leaves the fish vulnerable to parasites and infections. This isn’t likely to happen unless you’re a sport fisherman (ugh!) and you’ve caught the poor fellow in preparation for throwing him back so that he can go through it all again next weekend. Touching fish with a wet hand can also be harmful if you are wearing creams or other chemical products.
Many fish tank owners pet their fish – a friend had a big, aggressive fish (I can’t remember the type) who loved having his tummy scratched. As long as Duncan’s hands were clean, there was no risk posed by him putting a hand into the tank so that Oscar could get his weekly tickle.
When it will change the animal’s behaviour
Touching wild animals may alter their behaviour towards humans. It may make them more skittish and afraid, or it may do the reverse, and persuade them that people are not harmful. That’s a dangerous illusion to have. There’s no question in my mind that some of the marine life we encounter at Long Beach is so habituated to divers (on a busy weekend there can be more than 20 divers in the water at once) that one can get really close, and even make contact with the creatures. I’m not sure what the right thing to do here is – the damage (if you want to call it that) has been done already.
Final thoughts
There’s no question that as humans we have a powerful urge to interact with nature, and touch is one of those ways in which we can experience transcendence in the natural environment. We have to put aside ego, however, and think first of the wellbeing of the creature, and then of ourselves.
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
The Points of My Compass: Letters from the East, the West, the North, the South, E. B. White (1899 – 1985)
Here’s a rough edit of a lovely dive we did at Long Beach last year (Clare twisted my arm to put this up – I’m not happy with the state of polish of the final version), in 14 degree water with 7 metre visibility. The surface conditions were choppy, as you can see at the end of the video, but under the surface it was lovely.
There’s lots to see. Early on, look out for the common sandprawn (the large, white shrimpy thing). We see lots of their discarded carapaces at Long Beach but this is the only one we’ve seen with a sandprawn inside to date.
There’s also a huge cloud of fry – not sure which fish species, but clearly the imminent onset of spring was encouraging breeding! There’s a very brief shot of a chubby clingfish – the small orange chap clinging onto some sea lettuce, of which there is plenty. Watch out for the Cape topshell on the kelp, and a nudibranch egg ribbon on some green seaweed.
There’s an octopus, a super klipfish, a surprisingly tame puffadder shyshark and his relative the dark shyshark, and a fat longsnout pipefish. We saw a box sea jelly and a night light sea jelly, a peacock fanworm, and my favourite warty pleurobranch. And, of course, there are barehead gobies…
The video concludes with a shot of the inside of the barge wreck at Long Beach.
There’s a surprising variety of sea jellies to be seen in Cape Town, and one of the pleasures of a deep dive is hanging at the safety stop watching the passing jellyfish traffic. You’re almost guaranteed to see something cool… from a sea gooseberry, with its little disco lights pulsating along the ribbing on its sides, to a huge sea jelly (Tony has seen one half a metre across at Long Beach). They’re fun to photograph – though it’s always a bit of a lucky dip because you often can’t see the jelly in your viewfinder.
Tony filming a jellyfish at Long Beach
Their outer mantles are super fragile, so it’s not cool to poke at them (even though it is tempting) – you can damage their bodies with a careless finger. I’ve seen divers harrassing jellyfish at the safety stop, and while it may seem like fun, it’s mean and destructive.
Sea jelly at Fisherman's Beach
We see a lot of box sea jellies at Long Beach. They have four long tentacles, one on each corner of their boxy bodies. Tony was delighted to discover recently that they can retract their tentacles at will. We often see individuals with what looks like missing or damaged tentacles, but these little guys can adjust the length of their tentacles if they bump into something. They do also shed tentacles if they are stressed or get caught in something.
Box sea jelly with tentacles of various lengths at Long Beach
I like the night light sea jellies – they’re quite extravagant looking and their pink colour is very pretty. This one was photographed in somewhat dodgy visibility at Boat Rock in False Bay.
Night light sea jelly at Boat Rock
At a safety stop above the SAS Good Hope two weekends ago we saw a compass sea jelly for the first time. The water was very green and I’d had such a stressful dive I really wasn’t in a condition to take beautiful pictures, so this is the best I managed (he is upside down, tentacles pointing upwards):
Compass sea jelly in Smitswinkel Bay
Most of the varieties found here do have a nasty sting, but none of them will kill you. Fortunately we usually dive wearing so much neoprene that the only parts exposed are thin slivers of skin around the mouth and mask… But it is worth taking care anyway. First aid for jellyfish stings involves rinsing the area in vinegar or (if none is available) salt water. This stops the stinging cells from firing. Scrape off remaining tentacles gently with a blunt object. Alcohol or ammonia also works for the rinsing.
Crystal sea jelly on Tafelberg Reef in the Atlantic
On the subject of sea jellies, check out SA Jelly Watch at the University of the Western Cape if you’re a fan of these wobbly wonders. There’s information on different types, and an appeal for good photos of sea jellies to add to their census of what kinds can be found where.
