On a trip to snorkel with seals at Duiker Island in March, Kate got hold of my camera. She took most of these photos, which is why I am in some of them.
Snorkeling with the seals
You can see that it was a calm, beautiful day. The snorkellers were visiting South Africa from the United Kingdom, and had a wonderful time checking out the seal colony.
The Sentinel
Snorkelers ready to go
Chilling on the boat
It was warm enough for them to take a break on the boat when they got cold, warm up, and get back in the water. I don’t like to rush things – unexpected and interesting things always happen when you’re not expecting them to, and being in a hurry leads to missed opportunities.
The week has been good for diving, and we have completed a lot of courses, mostly SDI. We have had the boat out a few times and had some really good dives with the cowsharks. They seem to be back in full force and we have seldom seen less than 15 on a dive, within a few minutes of dropping into the water. While False Bay has been good, the Atlantic almost shut itself down with viz less than a metre on some days.
Despite the public holiday we made the call to stay home today expecting less than favourable conditions. Reports from those who dived were mixture between poor, good and awesome conditions. All are relative terms: the longer it has been since your last dive the more likely you are inclined to find 3-4 m viz “awesome”!
I took a drive down to Miller’s Point this afternoon as we have three launches tomorrow and was not surprised to see a huge number of boats waiting for a chance at using the slipway to get their boats out of the water. I am sure some of them waited more than an hour.
Craig doing some Peak Performance Buoyancy practice
Diving this weekend and next week
The wind dies down somewhat tonight and should be at around 10-12 km/h tomorrow so we are diving cowsharks and seals in the morning, and then doing a deep dive in the afternoon.
Saturday and Sunday sadly look a little on the dry side with winds in the region of 30-40 km/h and a 3-4 metre swell due to arrive tomorrow evening. This does not bode well for a wet weekend. I am keen to dive the weekend should anything change, so let me know if there is something you have in mind and if it’s possible we’ll do it.
The southeaster is going to blow nicely for a few days and then stop on Tuesday, which may be a lovely day for a dive. I’ll probably take the boat to Hout Bay that day – let me know if you’re interested.
Next Saturday is the Two Oceans Marathon, which, delightfully, passes right in front of our driveway. So I don’t think we’ll manage to dive that day. We will endeavour to get out on Friday, Sunday (if you’re not all full of Easter eggs) and Monday, weather permitting.
Kate ensures that Craig needs to be rescued, by dumping him in the sea
Travel
Our travel plans are finalised – we will be going to the Red Sea from 17-25 October. If you’re keen to book yourself a spot, let me know soon and I’ll put you in touch with the booking agent. We are doing the Northern Wrecks and Reefs itinerary.
Those of you who have expressed interest in our Durban trip to check out some wrecks in June will receive information on flight details and accommodation in the course of the weekend.
Dinho drags Craig up the beach while Kate looks on helpfully
Hi divers We launched in Hout Bay on Tuesday and had good viz, lots of seals and did some “myth busting” underwater with eggs and golf balls. It has been reported that there is currently 20-30 metre visibility on some sites in the Atlantic. Sadly the howling southeaster forecast for the weekend means we will have yet another dry weekend. I can’t in good conscience take either students or paying divers out when the wind is so strong; the potential for accidents is huge, and the boat ride and surface conditions are unpleasant and dangerous.
Ready to roll
Training
Gary and Oscar are very close to completing their Divemaster training. We have also done some Open Water and Advanced training in the last few weeks but have not had too many good weather days. Tomorrow I’m doing a DSD and Open Water training at Long Beach.
Night Diving
We are planning a night dive for next week, conditions permitting, mid week. We will meet at 7 pm at Long Beach and start the dive at around 7.30 or 8.00 pm. Let me know if you want to be notified of the day.
In the water
Bad weather days
There are options for bad weather days or evenings if your DSTV is dysfunctional. I am going to run an SDI Equipment Specialty for few evenings over the next month. Learn all about how and why your gear works, how to service it and give it the required TLC for it to outlive you. We will cover cylinders, pillar valves, inflators, regulators, BCDs and a whole lot more. After this course your corroded regulator will not get stuck half on a cylinder just before a dive! The Nitrox course is also theory-based and is fantastic to have if you plan to do any warm water diving, particularly.
Clean and clear
Trips
We’re still working on the Aliwal Shoal trip, and it looks as though we might switch it to Durban and spend some time diving with the guys at Calypso Diving. More information next week… The Red Sea trip is still quite far in the future but we are saving already! regards Tony Lindeque 076 817 1099 www.learntodivetoday.co.za www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog/Diving is addictive!
This peaceful, lovely (if I say so myself) video clip was taken at Duiker Island just outside Hout Bay. It’s a popular site for seal viewing by boat, snorkeling, and scuba diving.
False Bay is home to two seal colonies/haul out areas: Seal Island, which is inhabited by up to 70,000 seals, and the much smaller (a couple of hundred seals at most) Partridge Point haul out area, known as Seal Rock (perhaps only by me). For very sound reasons of safety, there is no scuba diving at Seal Island, but there is lovely diving and snorkeling at Seal Rock (Partridge Point). When eastern False Bay is whipped to a murky maelstrom by the south easterly wind, which prevails in summer, there is another option for those who wish to spend time with seals in the water.
A seal watching boat next to Duiker Island
Duiker Island is located just outside Hout Bay, around the corner from the Sentinel. It’s a low rock surrounded by relatively shallow water and inhabited by a few hundred seals. The south easterly wind cleans the water on the western side of the Cape Peninsula, bringing clear, cold water from the deep sea up onto the coast. If the wind isn’t too strong and the swell is safe (avoid this area when the swell is south westerly or very westerly – it’s dangerous) this is a wonderful place to snorkel or dive with Cape fur seals. A 4 kilometre boat ride is required to get here.
Seals over the reef at Duiker Island
It’s important to stay away from the channel between Duiker Island and the mainland, as that is where the seal watching charters from Hout Bay turn around to return to the harbour. Most diving is done on the north western side of the island where it is too shallow for the charter boats to come.
The seals are curious, playful, and sometimes quite pushy. You need to be confident and not flail your arms around; it’s like being in the presence of dogs you don’t know. They will come quite close, and occasionally do dominance displays of open mouths and large teeth. Keep your hands to yourself and don’t worry. Their underwater ballet is beautiful and diving with them is a pleasure.
Part of the reef at Duiker Island
The reef here is not as interesting as the reef around the False Bay colony at Partridge Point, but it is pretty. The rocks form several shallow, natural amphitheatres of several tens of metres diameter. There’s a lot of red seaweed and kelp, which the seals play with. One seal on our recent dive there tore strips of red seaweed off the rocks and trailed them behind him, while another removed a small kelp plant from its anchor and flung it about in the water like a toy.
This seal lay down in front of Tony
Unfortunately my camera was misting up on the day we dived here, so the pictures don’t quite do the lovely visibility justice.
Ark Rock (or Noah’s Ark) is a well-known landmark just off Boulders Beach. It has a certain melancholy aspect when viewed on a cloudy day, which is the sort of day on which we dived it recently. Any feeling of melancholy is swiftly replaced, upon approaching the rock, by a physical response to the almost overpowering stench of cormorant guano, which liberally coats the top of the rock along with the cormorants themselves. The beauty of this site is that one can find shelter regardless of which way the wind is blowing, but since it is near the top of False Bay the currents in the area can be moderately punchy.
Murky water full of seals
We have dived a couple of the many wreck sites near Ark Rock, namely one of the boilers and the Eastern Wreck.
Curious seal
There is frequently a group of young Cape fur seals in the water on the south side of the rock, thermoregulating and playing vigorously. This is an alternative location to do a seal dive when Seal Rock is unavailable due to large swells. The visibility here will never be spectacular, but even when it’s five metres or so the dive is very pleasant. Once one is tired of interacting with seals, it’s possible to swim around the rock and to explore the reef that extends some distance from the part of the rock that protrudes from the water.
Spiny sea star embrace
Cape rock crab on the reef
Klipfish in repose
The reef is densely packed with invertebrates
Perlemoen, urchins and false plum anemone
Echinoderms litter the reef
A redfingers sits very still
A crowned nudibranch among feather stars
A perlemoen on the rock
Tony has found this a very pleasant place to train Open Water students on their first boat dive, as the reef around the rock drops off in a stepwise manner down to 14-16 metres. Once students are comfortable close to the rock, in about 6 metres of water, they can go down to the next step, and the next.
Sea stars on one of the drop offs next to the rock
We found large quantities of electrical cables, which wikivoyage says is from the old navy degaussing range. This is related to removing or decreasing the magnetic field around a ship’s hull to minimise the risk from mines. There’s an explanation of how that used to work here and some more technical stuff here.
Cables from the degaussing range
It’s important to call the navy if you plan to dive here (in fact, anywhere from Long Beach down to A Frame) and leave your name with the guys in the Ops Room. While we were in the water Tony was harassed by a patrol boat captain who instructed him to leave the area because they’d been having trouble with poachers and (getting annoyed) “because I say so!” During their exchange these immortal words were uttered by the patrol boat captain: “Do you mean to say that you have no means of communicating with the divers while they are underwater?”
Fiery nudibranchs
Unfortunately I’d left my iPhone on the boat. (In reality Tony could have revved the boat’s engines and we would have known to surface, but since he’d been given no valid reason why we should get out of the water, he was feeling unco-operative.)
Sleeping pyjama catshark
It goes without saying that you must have an SMB or a towed buoy when you dive here, as the boat traffic is heavy.
On our way back to Simon’s Town after a dive at Shark Alley on 11 November 2012 we spotted a disturbance on the water and birds overhead in the distance. This usually indicates that something is feeding – maybe dolphins – so we switched off the boat and waited. The birds were coming our way. It turned out to be a huge group of over 100 Cape fur seals. At first they seemed to be feeding on something, as they were porpoising a lot and creating a lot of bubbles, but we couldn’t see any fish and none of them surfaced with anything in their mouths. They were heading in the direction of Seal Island, but at a fairly leisurely pace. There were really large seals as well as some smaller ones in the group, and they seemed very relaxed and social. Once they’d moved away, we switched on the boat and continued home.
Apparently (thanks Alison!) large groups of seals like this are quite common at night, as they leave Seal Island to feed. This group probably assembled in response to the presence of a large school of fish that they wanted to feed on.
Another expensive (and totally worth it) production from the BBC, Frozen Planet presents an exploration of the polar regions of earth, focusing on the wildlife and natural processes that make these areas so special.
There are episodes devoted to each season of the year, flanked by an episode providing an overview of the polar regions and one dealing with human activities in these areas. A special feature on climate change wraps up the series. Each episode is followed by a ten minute feature called “Freeze Frame”, which explains how particular footage was obtained – usually through a combination of ingenuity, luck, hardiness and persistence.
The series was dogged by two controversies, one minor (to my mind) and another somewhat more significant. The first involves a very brief piece of footage showing a polar bear mother and her newborn cubs. Rather than being filmed in the wild (which would have been almost impossible, if one thinks about it, because the mother bear is in partial hibernation under the snow while she gives birth), the footage was captured in a zoo. The way in which the footage is interspersed with shots of polar bears in the wild is somewhat misleading, and the voice over gives no indication that the mother and her cubs are in captivity.
The second controversy involves climate change, and the increasingly popular anti-science stance espoused particularly by the religous right, a powerful political lobby in the United States which has managed to transform a purely scientific issue into a political one. In a special feature on the third disc of the set, which deals with the changing polar environment as more and more ice melts each year, any mention of the causes of climate change is avoided, and host David Attenborough intones “The days of the Arctic Ocean being covered by a continuous sheet of ice seem to be past. Whether or not that’s a good or bad thing, of course, depends on your point of view.” Rather than taking a definitive evidence-based stance on the fact that global warming is a result of human activity on the planet – a view which is held by mainstream scientists who base their opinions on statistics, observations, experiments and hard evidence – the producers of the series chose to prevaricate in order to avoid offending a vocal and wilfully ignorant minority.
These things aside, Frozen Planet is a magnificent production that shows the scope and complexity of these little-seen parts of our planet. The resourcefulness and adaptations of the animals and birds that spend all or part of their lives enduring the extreme climate and landscape of the polar regions are magnificent. There is wonderful underwater footage, showing penguins, orcas, beluga, seals, narwhal and whales hunting, socialising and feeding, and urchins, sea stars and corals far under the ice. The underwater visibility is astonishing, as is the courage of the cameramen who venture under thick ice into freezing water to obtain footage.
Ice caves under Mount Erebus in Antarctica are spectacular and untouched, and the scale of the plateaus and mountains of the Antarctic is incredible. (In comparison, the Arctic seems like a bustling metropolis!) The completely hostile environment got me all choked up thinking about the early polar explorers who risked (and lost) their lives in efforts to extend the frontiers of human knowledge.
The final episode deals with man’s presence at the poles (scientists in Antarctica, and indigenous people in the Arctic). I loved the footage of Longyearbyen in the Svalbard archipelago (on my “must visit” list). Tony and I particularly enjoyed the segment showing the Danish navy officers patrolling in Greenland, with fourteen huskies, a sled, skis, and a vast snowy wilderness larger than France and the UK combined.
You can buy the DVD here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise here or here. The US version is narrated by Alec Baldwin.
It’s usually Tony that spends a lot of time on the bay, driving the boat to dive sites, waiting on the boat for divers to surface, and just enjoying the great wildlife spectacle that is False Bay. I hadn’t dived for ages, and on a Saturday in early October when the opportunity arose, I was ill. I stayed on the boat with Tony, and got to experience some of what happens while I’m usually under the surface.
Young seals at Ark Rock
Tony meets the cormorant
The cormorant was unafraid
The divers first got into the water to play with the seals at Ark Rock, in the shallow water in the wind shadow of the rock. The seals were mostly juveniles, leaping in and out of the water. There was brisk traffic of seals leaving and arriving the site, as well as large numbers of cormorants roosting on the rock.
Cheeky cormorant dips his head in the water
One cormorant swam over to the boat and spent some time inspecting the motors. He duck dived under the boat a few times and came up on the other side. He also pecked Tony on the hand when it became apparent that we had no bird food on board!
Tony on the boat
The second dive was at Shark Alley. The divers didn’t see any cowsharks – none had been seen since mid September. It’s not known whether they moved away to mate or forage for food. In fact, shamefully little is known about these sharks. While the divers were in the water we noticed a large seal thrashing about, attended by a huge flock of birds. Reminded of the battle he witnessed between a seal and a spearnose skate, Tony moved the boat across to take a look.
The shape of a shark is clearly visible
The seal pushes the shark to the surface
Lots of teeth and whiskers
Mugging for the camera
Seal showing off with a shark
The seal had a dead shark, probably thrown overboard from one of the many fishing boats that was out on the water that day. The shark was large and seemed heavy, and the seal was struggling a bit to keep it near the surface. I didn’t get a good look at its dorsal side, but from its shape and white belly we guess that it was a blue shark, maybe 1-1.2 metres long. The seal showed off for a bit, played the great hunter, and smacked the shark about. On the way back we found some interesting things to look at at False Bay Yacht Club. Never boring!
Two pieces of a catamaran waiting for assembly at FBYC
We had some great diving last weekend, and were on a mission to find the cowsharks and clean water. Our first dive on Sunday was to Ark Rock, a relatively easy but beautiful site with sheer walls, overhangs, ledges and a sort of cave. There is also almost always a handful of very playful seals to start and end the dive with.
Pyjama catshark at Ark Rock
We then went to dive at Atlantis. Our expectations of cleaner water below the murky top layer did not materialise (even at 15 metres) so we hauled into the boat and went to look for the sevengill cowsharks. For some reason or another there have been very few sightings of these animals since mid-September, and we have been trying to find them in several different places over the last week or two. We had a plan, it was dived and I waited on the boat. Happily a few minutes into the dive Clare’s head popped up (still attached) and she shouted they had found them.
Small cowshark at Shark Alley
I launched again on Tuesday and we dropped in on the very same spot and there they were. There aren’t as many to see as there have been on other occasions, and they didn’t seem as curious as they sometimes are, but we were very glad to see that they’re still in the general vicinity of Shark Alley.
Seal convocation in False Bay
On our way back from Shark Alley we were overtaken by a huge group of very relaxed and playful seals. It was an amazing experience – there’s a video here.
Training
We are busy tomorrow and the weekend with Rescue and Open Water, and next week I have two courses running back to back: the Drift and Deep Specialties. We will start these courses on Tuesday. Monday will be a Discover Scuba day most likely, at Long Beach.
This weekend
I think False Bay will be the place to dive and we will do shore dives with Open Water students on Saturday with Rescue in the afternoon. On Sunday we will do two launches for student qualifying dives and some more Rescue training.
