Last Saturday we did a night dive at Long Beach. Four of the eight divers were doing their first night dives ever: Craig, Tamsyn, Dinho and Liam. Conditions were excellent and we had a great time. Photos in this newsletter are from that dive.
Liam on the night dive
Weekend plans
As the days grow longer and summer beckons (it’s called positive thinking) we do still need to get through August, which according to the weather sites is the stormy month. There has been little sign of winter during the week and most days have been fairly pleasant. False Bay is quite clean and blue.
That all changes starting late tomorrow as a long period 6.5 metre swell rolls into the bay. That coupled with some rain will make diving a bit surgy and unpleasant, and my feeling is that it best be left alone for this weekend. If you’re at a loose end please pop down to Glencairn Beach or the far end of Long Beach to support the OMSAC Finathon, or take part if you feel up to it! Sponsorship of the divers/swimmers/paddlers can be directed towards Shark Spotters, a cause close to our hearts!
Perlemoen at Long Beach
DAN Day
Last Saturday we attended the DAN Day at the Simon’s Town navy base. We had a tour of their dive training facility (this is most likely where you’ll end up if you need to use a recompression chamber after a dive accident), and then a series of very informative talks.
Pyjama catsharks asleep in the pipeline
DAN or Divers’ Alert Network is an international organisation that provides a form of insurance whereby they will pay for any expenses related to diving accidents that your medical aid and travel insurance don’t cover. They will also pay for you to be evacuated if necessary, and these costs can be severe. However, if you choose not to take out DAN cover, they are still the people to call if you or your buddy has a suspected case of decompression illness. They have doctors on call who will guide you as to what to do, and they will arrange a chamber and evacuation if necessary (however the costs will be for your account). You don’t have to know where your nearest chamber is and whether it’s operational, because DAN keeps that information for you.
Please visit the DAN SA website, check them out, put their number into your phone (0800 020 111 in SA or +27 (0) 82 810 6010 if dialling from outside SA), and let me know if you have any questions (I might be able to help, or I can refer you to someone at DAN who can). Clare and I have cover, and it costs us about R175 per month for both of us. You can also take out cover specifically for a dive trip, if you don’t feel you dive enough to justify year-round membership. For an interesting story about someone who really needed their DAN membership, read this.
Diving and exercise
One talk at the DAN Day that was particularly interesting was about diving and exercise. Studies have found that light exercise a few hours both before and after a dive can be beneficial in reducing gas bubble formation, which is a good thing (too many bubbles cause the bends). The speaker also reminded us that one must keep fit to dive; diving isn’t going to make you fit, but being fit before coming diving will keep you safe and healthy.
I don’t think this dive site has a name (other than what we call it), or that it’s high on anyone else’s list of fun places to dive, but it’s proved to be a reliable and quite lovely site that’s specially suitable for new divers.
The Sentinel is that striking mountain outcrop that stands at the entrance to Hout Bay, dropping off steeply into the Atlantic. Beneath it is a fairly dense kelp forest and a scattering of smallish round boulders that add variation to the underwater landscape. The maximum depth in the area is not more than about eight metres.
Kelp forest
We dived the site after a dive on the SS Maori, on a day when the visibility was not magnificent, but tolerable. Tony has on many occasions taken students there and found that the water is far cleaner than it is at Duiker Island nearby (probably less run off of seal bodily fluids…) and inside Hout Bay. The site can be a little uncomfortable when it is very surgy, as the movement of the kelp and the seaweed beneath you on the rocks is disconcerting.
Kate is neutrally buoyant
There are not many large fish – this is typical of the inshore Atlantic sites we dive – but in summer clouds of West coast rock lobster larvae and other fish fry may cause the water to shimmer hazily. I can guarantee you that you will not see a single abalone, though if you swim right up to shore in this area you will see thousands and thousands and thousands of empty abalone shells in the shallows and on the beach. This is where the poachers who rule Hout Bay shuck the perlemoen before carrying them up the mountain to dispose of them.
South African writer and scholar Jonny Steinberg wrote one of my favourite books, The Number, which should be required reading for every Capetonian. He has written several other books and is a scrupulous and thorough researcher with a wonderfully readable writing style. He also does not shy away from complexity, refusing to settle for simple and expedient explanations.
Steinberg identifies four factors which caused the tremendous growth in the abalone poaching industry in the early 1990’s, as South Africa became a democracy:
The rand-US dollar exchange rate weakened from R2.55 at the end of 1990, to R11.99 by the end of 2001. This made exports of US dollar-denominated commodities (with cost of production in rands) an extremely lucrative way to make money.
An efficient Chinese organised crime presence had already existed in South Africa for many years.
South Africa has notoriously poor border controls and porous borders.
The changing political situation had a significant impact on the coloured fishing communities along the coastline.
Steinberg identifes the fourth factor as the most important one. He says this:
The transition to democracy carried with it a universal expectation that access to the sea ought to open up quickly and dramatically. To make the politics of the moment more complicated, many members of coastal coloured communities were deeply suspicious of the recently unbanned ANC. Come South Africa’s first democratic election in April 1994, the coloured working class would vote overwhelmingly for the ruling party of the apartheid era, the National Party, in the hope that it would provide a bulwark against their fears of an African majority government.
It was a potent combination: on the one hand the expectation that democracy ought to be coupled with the speedy implementation of a just fishing regime; on the other, a deeply held suspicion that the new government would betray the coloured working class. This cocktail of expectations and fears could not have been more propitious for abalone poaching. The resource was lying there in the sea and growing more lucrative by the day. Given the politics of the moment, a great many people who had lived their lives on the coastline believed that they were entitled to it, and to a share of the benefits that accrued from harvesting it.
Compare the sentiments described above (“people who had lived their lives on the coastline believed that they were entitled to it, and to a share of the benefits that accrued from harvesting it”) to those expressed by the poacher whom Tony described meeting. It’s very hard to argue against this viewpoint.
Abalone on the slipway at Miller’s Point
Last year 7 tons of South African abalone left our shores. One ton of it was legally produced (farmed, with about 150kg harvested from the sea), and the rest was poached. The technicalities of poaching are surprisingly straightforward, for various reasons. Here is one – the nature of abalone itself:
Abalone can be dried, preserved for months or years, and then rehydrated and returned to its natural state. This is crucial to the smuggling process for several reasons. First, live or frozen abalone has a pungent and distinctive smell and is thus difficult to transport or ship undetected. Dried abalone can also be disguised as another product, particularly when border and law enforcement officials have not been trained to recognise it. Second, dried abalone can be preserved indefinitely, which means that it can be gathered over long periods and shipped in bulk. Finally, dried abalone shrinks to about a tenth of its original mass, making it possible store and ship very large consignments.
Dried abalone looks nothing like fresh abalone, and in some cases DNA tests are required to establish what it is. Some of the exported abalone is bartered for drugs, or the ingredients to manufacture them (tik being an obvious example), from the east.
It is clear that this is a problem that does not have a simple solution. However, I don’t believe that the entire subject should be brushed under the carpet by the recreational dive industry because it’s hard to deal with and creates an uncomfortable conflict of interest between the desire to protect our marine environment and the desire to make money selling gear and filling cylinders for poachers. I don’t know – at all – how to address the problem, because refusing to serve someone at a dive shop because you suspect they’re engaged in illegal activity isn’t practical or, necessarily, moral. It could also be personally dangerous. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?
Here is a link to the full text of the paper on the Institute of Security Studies website.
Footnote:
Steinberg mentions that at the time of his writing (2005), the South African government was considering listing abalone in the CITES agreement. CITES, which stands for “Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora”, is an international agreement that requires that certain species must be accompanied by special documentation when are moved across international borders. Rhino horn, some sharks, and seahorses are other examples of animals and animal products subject to CITES.
In 2007, the South African government did in fact go ahead with the CITES listing. There is more information on that decision and the extent of the poaching problem here.
I met an abalone poacher some time ago – just after I first came to Cape Town. He’d brought his regulator in for repairs to a dive shop that I happened to be visiting. When the technician opened it up, it was packed solid with particles of rust from his dive cylinders. Confronted with the information that it will cause him to drown one day if he doesn’t bring his cylinders for a visual inspection and hydrostatic cleaning, the poacher explained that his dive cylinders wouldn’t pass a visual, because they’re painted black (instead of South Africa’s regulation grey and canary yellow).
His cylinder isn’t the only thing that is painted black. ALL his dive gear – wetsuit, booties, hood, gloves, regulator, hoses, first stage, pillar valves, BCD, mask, fins, torches, dive computer – is black. There’s not a single reflective surface anywhere. According to the poacher, if he was standing by the side of the road in his dive gear at night, fully kitted up, and you drove past, you wouldn’t see him. At all.
What does he do with all this stealth gear? He dives, alone, at night, to fetch abalone (perlemoen) from the sea. His dives are often to 50 metres, on air, and he has no redundancy in his setup. No alternate air source on his cylinder (“For whom?” he asked), and no buddy. He sometimes does four such dives a night, and can make R40,000 for a single night’s work.
His view of what he does is that the abalone lives in the sea, and if he goes and fetches it, it’s his. “The ocean is free,” he said. Hardly anyone else is prepared to do four night dives in a row to depths of 50 metres with no support except for a boat on the surface (with no lights showing), and to look for abalone and pry them off the rocks with a crowbar. Why shouldn’t he reap the rewards? He told me that he’s not taking money from poor people – he’s only taking from the ocean, and it’s a big place.
It’s dangerous work, too (and not just because of the way he dives). There are rival poaching groups on the south/east and west coasts, and a police crackdown on the west coast has brought “boatloads” of their poachers across to this side of the world. Shots have been fired, cylinders have been filled with water (hence at least some of the rust), and a simmering atmosphere of impending violent conflict has arisen.
This was the first time that I’d talked to a poacher, and it gave me a lot to think about. This is a world that we don’t necessarily have any insight into as recreational scuba divers, even though we know that what the poachers do is wrong.
Clare and I have seen poachers once or twice before, filling cylinders or buying gear (lots of it, expensive stuff) from dive shops all over. I’ve also seen more than one at Miller’s Point, early in the morning. One tried to sell me his dive gear for money to get home, because his friends had left him alone at the slipway wearing nothing but a wetsuit and his trenchcoat.
You may wonder why I am mentioning this. No one talks about it in the dive industry because it’s awkward and poachers have a lot of cash to spend on gear and air fills. But there is value in looking at hard issues. Tomorrow there is some more reading about abalone poaching, and it’s very thought provoking!
Abalone (or perlemoen, Haliotis midae) is a highly exploited marine resource in South Africa, to the extent that it is currently illegal for individuals to harvest abalone from the ocean. All fishing was suspended in early 2008. Formerly it was possible to get a permit to do so. Limited commercial fishing has been allowed since 2010. The government acknowledged that this would cause further depletion of the wild stock of abalone, but framed the decision as one to protect the livelihood of approximately 1,000 abalone fishermen. When there is no abalone left to fish, I wonder what those fishermen will do?
Ten, twenty and forty year old abalone
The demand for this unprepossessing grey mollusc is almost limitless, primarily from the east, where it is viewed as a status symbol and is highly sought after at banquets and to prove the host’s prestige. Given the huge demand and the fact that South African waters are the natural habitat of this species, abalone farming has flourished in South Africa, with eleven farms in operation. The largest is Abagold, with four farms located in Hermanus. Abagold employs over 350 local people (it is the largest employer after the municipality). Farm tours are offered every week day at 11am (they cost R50), and Tony and I did one on our way back from De Kelders.
The Abagold farming operation is extensive, actually consisting of several separate farms all located close to the (new) harbour in Hermanus. The tanks are supplied with fresh water directly out of the ocean – the temperature (generally 15-18 degrees) and water quality is not adjusted at all, since this is the optimum natural habitat for the creatures. The animals are fed on kelp, sea lettuce, and specially manufactured abfeed, and no chemicals are added to the water. As a result, the farm can pump the water straight back out into the ocean without causing any contamination. There is a constant circulation of millions of litres of water through the farm, keeping the abalone oxygenated.
The holding pens have a beautiful sea view
Breeding stock are kept separately, and range in age from three to 30 years. Pairs are retrieved from the ocean periodically, and returned after a time. Abalone are distinctively male or female, distinguishable by the colour of their gonads, which are nestled under their shell above their large fleshy foot. Abalone spawn between August and November in nature, prompted by increased oxygen levels in the water. To stimulate spawning in captivity, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is added to the water containing broodstock, which causes their muscles to contract and release eggs and sperm.
Three to six month old abalone
Spat clinging to an algae-covered plastic sheet
The underside of some spat feeding on specially grown algae
Three to six month old abalone inside a plastic cone
The cones under which 3-6 month old abalone live
The water in the breeding tanks is constantly refreshed
Baby abalone on my hand
Eggs and sperm are mixed in the correct proportions, and fertilised eggs sink to the bottom of the tanks where they are sucked out and placed in tanks where they hatch after several hours. Algae is specially cultivated on large plastic sheets, to which the free swimming larvae attach when they are ready (after about a week). They spend about three months feeding on these algae-covered sheets of plastic. The baby abalone (spat) are beautiful, with blue and turquoise, perfectly formed little shells 3-5 millimetres in size.
In order to remove the fragile abalone from the plastic sheets, they are anaesthetised with an infusion of magnesium sulphate into their water, which enables them to be gently rubbed off the sheets. It is around the age of three months that they develop light-sensitive eyes, which prompts them to seek out darker hiding places. Black plastic cones are supplied under which the young abalone live for another three to four months.
The blue-grey colour of the gonads visible here shows this is a female
At about six months of age the abalone are sorted by size and moved into simple tanks with fittings that are constructed largely of standard irrigation piping and hard plastic sheets. The abalone are quite sensitive to their environment and water has to be kept very clean. They spent the next 3-5 years growing in their tanks.
The fringe, eyes and mouth are visible here
An example of a holding pen
These abalone are close to 30 years old
This abalone is several years old
The underside of an abalone, showing its meaty foot and fringe
Young abalone in the breeding tank
Kelp is collected to feed the abalone at various farms in the Hermanus area
When the abalone are large enough (about 250 grams, I think – a bit bigger than my palm), they are removed from their shells. The gonads, mouth, eyes and other organs are discarded, and the foot is either canned in fresh water and pressure cooked in the tin, or dried, in about a 50-50 split. All the production is exported to Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, and Singapore, with a 440 gram tin of abalone in brine fetching R200 to R450 for Abagold (it obviously costs more to buy it in the shops). The farm produces nearly 500 tons of abalone per year. This is big, big business.
Canned abalone is imported to the east
The finished product: canned abalone
Various abalone species from around the world
We were very excited to see how sustainable this aquaculture model is. Fish farming isn’t a wonderfully clean or sustainable business, but this seems to be an effective way to reduce demand for wild abalone without harming the environment. There is a long way to go, however, before supply of abalone outstrips (or even comes close to matching) demand – according to our tour guide, there are buyers for whatever quantity of abalone the farms can produce. Legally harvested and farmed abalone comprised one ton out of the seven tons of abalone that left South African shores last year. The scale of the poaching problem is massive.
In the second week of October we spent a few days at a bed and breakfast situated right on the cliffs at De Kelders, a tiny residential suburb located about 35 kilometres past Hermanus and less than five kilometres from Gansbaai. It was both a mental health break and an early celebration of our two year wedding anniversary, which actually takes place at the end of next month (our marriage seems to have been both longer – to Tony! – and shorter than that). You can send Noddy badges to our postal address.
Looking towards the inside of Walker Bay
De Kelders is Dutch for “the cellars”, and is so called because the limestone cliffs on which the town is perched are riddled with caves – some of spectacular dimensions. It is also one of the finest locations in the world for land-based whale watching. Walker Bay is a wide, open bay with Hermanus at its western top corner, and De Kelders on the eastern edge. Each year, many southern right whales make their way to this part of the coastline to calve, socialise, mate and generally delight the tiny humans who flock to this part of the world to observe them.
Gathering clouds over the cliffs
I first visited De Kelders briefly with Tony in October 2010 as part of a stay at Grootbos. We spent an early evening eating oysters and watching whales from a balcony at De Kelders. (We didn’t pay for any part of this trip – very fortunate – our style is more Salticrax and Steri Stumpies while sitting in the car!) My acquaintance with this quiet suburb was renewed by the television series and book Shoreline, which dealt in some detail with one of the historically significant caves in the cliffs there. Stone age humans made a home in the caves some 75,000 years ago and added marine protein to their diets from shellfish, seabirds and seals. Poor planning and sheer laziness on my part meant that we did not visit any of the caves that required a guide or an entrance fee, but we did see several caves of varying dimensions in our scramble over the cliffs.
Jagged rocks covered with lichen
The view from our balcony on the first evening we were in De Kelders
Narrow channels between rocky islands
Rocky beach
Milky blue water, kelp and orange rocks
Dark clouds over De Kelders
Sign marking the location where horses from the Birkenhead shipwreck came ashore
Freshwater pool on the cliffs
A small cave under the cliffs
Cliff Street at De Kelders
Wally the whale is a sad-looking full size model of a southern right whale
In which I meet Wally the whale
What are YOU looking at?
Dassie on the cliffs
It is possible to walk along the cliffs, with varying degrees of rock hurdling required. There are narrow gullies through which the tide rushes fiercely, and one or two tiny sandy beaches that might allow swimming. The cliffs are lined with kelp beds, and during the months of June to November the whales approach right to the edge of the kelp, where the mothers are quite still and their calves test out their vocalisation and physical abilities.
Protected inlets where whales lie
We took a whale watching boat trip on our first full day in De Kelders. The second day was miserably rainy in the morning, so we drove down to Danger Point lighthouse near Gansbaai (and got pelted by rain). That afternoon we watched whales and walked on the cliffs. We drove home on Wednesday via Hermanus, where we saw more whales and visited an abalone farm (on this subject, more to follow). It was profoundly relaxing and a beautiful break.
We took a trip up the coast to De Kelders in search of whales on Sunday and stayed until Wednesday. From the balcony of our B&B, less than 100 metres from the shoreline, we were able to spend hours watching mothers and calves frolicking in the shallows. We also took a boat trip with Marine Dynamics where they get really close to the whales. We were fortunate to see at least two pearly white juveniles and some really huge mothers. We also took a tour of an abalone farm, and visited a dive centre, Scuba Africa, in Hermanus and will plan a weekend of boat diving up there sometime soon.
White southern right whale calf
Whilst we were photographing real live whales there was a carcass of a 15-odd meter whale on the beach in Muizenberg. Sadly it seems this was loaded onto a low-bed truck and taken to a landfill somewhere. I would have thought towing it out to sea for the sharks and other creatures to feed on would be a better option but given the forecast southeaster for this week it would most likely have ended up back on the beach. Thanks to Maurice for the photos of a whale on Vanguard drive!
Dead whale on its way down Vanguard Drive to a landfill
Last weekend
Perhaps a seasonal thing, the sevengill cowsharks have also disappeared (temporarily I assume) and very few have been seen over the last few weeks. We had divers there last weekend and despite an exhaustive search they didn’t find any. Neither did any of the other twenty or so divers who were doing shore entries at the same time! We also dived Ark Rock and played with some very friendly young seals there. While we were on the boat we were visited by an extremely curious cormorant. Unfortunately we only had chocolate on board.
A visiting cormorant
This weekend
Talking of southeasters, it seems summer is starting to make its way here and the southeaster is a sign of warmer days and some cold Atlantic diving. Reports from the “city” guys are that the visibility is around 15 metres at the moment on the Atlantic shore and thanks to a week of southeaster the False Bay shore has less than 3-4 metre viz.
I doubt there will be any point diving in False Bay. The forecast is for strong wind Saturday and even stronger on Sunday, from the south east at 30km/h on Saturday and 35 km/h on Sunday. This does mean Atlantic, but where? I reckon we should launch from OPBC and dive North and South Paw with Justin’s Caves as an option. The mountain protects the coastline there from the wind and the southeaster cleans the water. If you want in, let me know. We will launch on Saturday.
I’ve dived Photographer’s Reef twice now. The first time was at the ScubaPro Day, and conditions were marginal (read: pea soup with a howling current). I took photos then, but certainly not the kind that one would use to recommend a dive site to others. We dived this reef again recently, off the new(ish) Learn to Dive Today boat, Seahorse. The conditions were much better – calm on the surface, with about 6 metre visibility. When we turned the corner of the reef towards the seaward side, however, things got a bit greenish!
Redbait, urchins and other invertebrate life
Bernita checks out a wall
Boulders at Photographer’s Reef
Photographer’s Reef (known as JJM Reef by old-school local divers) is located offshore from the Boulder’s Beach penguin colony, and one of the pleasures of diving here is seeing small groups of penguins passing by on the surface as they head out to forage for food. We didn’t see any underwater – that’s very unusual – but Tony, who stayed on the boat, said that one group that swam past kept sticking their heads underwater to check out our bubbles.
A gully in the reef
The top of the reef is at 3-5 metres
Photographer’s Reef is a jumble of boulders
The reef is compact and shallow – the top is about 3-5 metres deep, and the sand is at perhaps 12 metres. This means you can have a very long dive here, and it’s the kind of place you want to spend time at. (We didn’t stay very long – it was the second dive of the day and the wind was freezing, so we were all coolish when we got in!) The indefatigable Peter Southwoodsuggests that this can be done as a shore dive, if you’re fit and have good navigation skills.
Sea fan in a swim through
There are a number of swim throughs and caverns on this reef, which is made up of a jumble of giant boulders. We didn’t visit all of them, but they make for a very varied dive. There are gullies and overhangs to explore, and the site is aptly named as it is a photographer’s dream. (I’m sorry I didn’t do it justice!)
Territorial roman
Roman on the reef
Roman
Roman in the green water
Klipfish at rest
A klipfish curls around some redbait
The site is inside a restricted area, and it was lovely to see numerous small roman defending their patches of reef. I saw a couple of abalone, but since reading Currents of Contrast by Thomas Peschak I’ve realised that we never, ever see abalone in the kind of abundance (and by that I mean wall-to-wall shells, so that their broadcast spawning technique can be effective) that nature intended and accommodated before most of these creatures were stolen from the ocean.
Abalone with passengers
An abalone surrounded by mussels
Group of abalone at Photographer’s Reef
A cuttlefish hides in a crack in the rocks
Christo found a cuttlefish inside one of the cracks in the side of the reef, and there were many nudibranchs to choose from. There’s an abundance of invertebrate life here.
Two black nudibranchs making friends
FIsh feeding among the anemones and sea fans
Sea fan in green water
Three fiery nudibranchs (towards the bottom right of the photo)
Fanworms at Photographer’s Reef
Orange lined crowned nudibranch and black nudibranch
As will all things these days we need to keep up with the Joneses (hi Tami!) so this newsletter comes to you courtesy of mailchimp. There may be hiccups, glitches and the odd gremlin so if you spot one, have a laugh and then report the incidents to the newsletter police, headed up by Clare. It’s also easy for you to unsubscribe (see the link at the bottom of the email) if you don’t want to receive these weekly updates.
Getting in at Sandy Cove
January is always an amusing month in the dive industry. For some, an entire month is required to recover from Christmas, but thankfully we have passed that mark and we are now back to normality. On Saturday we dived really early, 7.00 am at Sandy Bay near Oudekraal, with 4-5 metre visibility and 12 degree water. Sunday we dived at Long Beach and had 5 metre visibility with 18 degree water.
Abalone at Sandy Cove
It has been a month of mixed diving with the water in False Bay reaching 23 degrees, something I would not have imagined possible. Visibility has been varied with some divers having 15 metres in the Atlantic and us having 5 metres last Saturday. False Bay has also had quite a range.
Double sash butterflyfish and octopus at Long Beach
The southeaster is currently stirring the oceans and False Bay does not look great right now. Today the wind blew at close to 50 km/h and it will do so again tomorrow. It drops off on Saturday somewhat but the water in False Bay will not clear enough for Sunday as the wind picks up again on Saturday night.
On Saturday we will be in the pool. The wind means it is Atlantic on Sunday, off the boat, but you will need to confirm quickly as the conditions are likely to be good. Most regular weather savvy divers know this, and the boat will fill quickly.
Please remember our planned Mozambique trip from 7-12 May, to Ponta do Ouro. We are in the planning stages and Clare and I are very much looking forward to some warm water diving with manta rays, whale sharks, potato bass, moray eels, and whoever else comes out to play. If you’re interested or want more details, let me know!
The Living Shores of Southern Africa – George & Margo Branch
The Living Shores of Southern Africa
It took me a while to get my hands on a copy of this classic volume by Margo and George Branch, with photography by AnthonyBannister. It was a staple in the classroom of every biology teacher I ever had, and occupies pride of place behind the microscope display at the Two Oceans Aquarium, where it has helped countless nonplussed volunteers answer sticky questions about jellyfish reproduction or the eating habits of limpets. It was first published in 1983 and is long out of print.
The first half of the book deals with habitats – the rocky shore, beaches, estuaries, the open ocean, coral reefs, and kelp forests. The authors manage to sneak in quite a lot of physical oceanography without one noticing, as it obviously impacts the flora and fauna that can colonise a particular area. Prof Branch has a special interest in limpets, and I was amazed to discover the intricate adaptations that these unassuming little creatures have to life in the highly competitive, high stress intertidal zone. The section on kelp forests was also wonderful to me, as a regular diver in these parts! I found the chapter on estuaries somewhat dispiriting, given that it was written thirty years ago and it seems unlikely that matters have changed since then. Prof Branch used the Richard’s Bay estuary of the Mhlathuze River as an example of how human interference turned a thriving, sensitive ecosystem into a muddy wasteland in a matter of a couple of years. I have not visited Richard’s Bay, and indeed had not heard anything about this particular estuary before encountering it in this book, so I will have to do some research to find out whether it’s still in such a parlous state.
I found the sections on sharks, seals and whales – under the chapter on man and the sea – puzzling and upsetting, but perhaps they are just a reflection on where scientific understanding of ecosystems was in the early 1980s. I would be interested to hear Prof Branch’s views on these three types of animal today.
Sharks
On sharks, the authors mention that the Natal Anti-Shark Measures Board (now renamed to something less obviously brutal, but still with the same ultimate aim of killing sharks) killed 11,700 large sharks in eleven years (presumably the decade to 1980). The authors state that it is not known what the effect of removing so many top predators will be on the ecosystem, but do note that there were an estimated extra 2.8 million dusky sharks – a smaller species that has thrived in the absence of tiger and bull sharks – at the end of the eleven year period in question. I was immediately reminded of the fairly recent shark bite that occurred on a baited dive on Aliwal Shoal a few months ago. The culprit was a dusky shark.
What I found unsettling was that very little concern was expressed about the impact of killing so many sharks – highly migratory creatures, in many cases – along a small region of the coastline. The authors do mention the case of Tasmania, which after a few years of shark nets experienced a population explosion of octopus (traditional shark food), who destroyed the local rock lobster population and the profitable local lobster fishing industry. I know that the authors’ focus has been more on coastal species, but their apparent lack of recognition of the role of sharks in a healthy ocean was strange to me given their obvious awareness of how vital is every link of the food web on the rocky shore (urchins, abalone, kelp, sea otters, rock lobster, etc.).
Seals
The authors describe the economic value of the seal cull (which in the 1980s was a grim reality of South African life, and in Namibia still is the case). Baby seals were (are) valued for their soft pelts and the oil in their bodies, and mature seals just for the oil – their pelts were deemed to be too battle-scarred to make into a fur coat. The method of killing baby seals with a blow to their heads was sanctioned as humane by the NSPCA because their little skulls are still soft when they are young (and, in a happy coincidence, it doesn’t damage the pelts).
Apart from the economic rationale for killing seals, the authors state that seal colonies “attract sharks” – as if this is a reason to destroy them. I found this extremely confusing – why is one creature more important or desirable than another? The fact that fish, limpets, seals and sharks exist in the ocean means that they all have a role to play, and that somehow these populations lived in balance before human intervention.
Another reason provided for the annual seal cull (which at one point left 35 seals on Seal Island, in contrast to the current population of over 75,000 seals) was that their numbers were increasing “unchecked” and threatening the nesting sites of seabirds on the island. Nowhere do the authors acknowledge that the reason for the seal population explosion could be that their natural predator, the white shark, was fished to the brink of disappearance off the South African coast by testosterone-fueled trophy hunters. Fortunately today shark and seal eco-tourism is big business, and I don’t think (I stand to be corrected) that any seals are legally killed in South Africa any more.
Whales
Whaling was an entrenched part of the South African economy from the early 1800s, but was comprehensively banned in 1979, shortly before this book was published. In Blue Water White Deaththe whaling station in Durban was shown, and whale carcasses were used by the filmmakers to attract sharks. The authors provide a synopsis of the state of whaling in the world’s oceans at the time of writing (depressing – what is the validity of “scientific whaling” when it is conducted by a country that feeds whale meat to school children?) and the population status of various types of whale.
They suggest that, because the small Minke whale competes with blue whales for food, Minke whales should continue to be hunted in order to give blue whales a chance at increasing their numbers. My (admittedly uninformed) view of it is that – what with the population explosion of krill that whaling engendered in the Southern Ocean, the blue whales aren’t even going to notice a few small Minkes dining at the lunch bar with them. Whale populations have been reduced to such a tiny fraction of what they used to be that – for a long time still, everything else being equal – competition for food isn’t going to feature in their population dynamics. My feeling on the matter is that if a Minke whale ever even SEES a blue whale, let alone has the opportunity to argue over a ball of krill with it, it should count itself a lucky little whale and move right along.
The second half of the book deals with specific organisms, their life cycle (beautifully illustrated by Margo Branch), and their habits. The authors focus on invertebrates, as (they say) fishes are extensively dealt with in other volumes. The accompanying photographs were taken by Anthony Bannister, and have not dated at all in terms of quality – they are vivid, clear, and beautiful.
Some of what I learned
I learned a huge amount from this book. It’s clearly provided source material for almost every other South African marine flora and fauna book that has been written, and sentences – that I’ve seen in other books and presentations – kept ringing bells with me (I tend to use my fish ID books quite hard, trying to wring out every last fact from the one-paragraph descriptions accompanying the photos). The authors in fact collaborated on the handy Two Oceansguide, which keeps getting better with each new edition and is indispensible for the travelling South African diver.
I learned that the presence of plough shells on a beach generally indicates that it is safe for swimming – these little snails surf in the waves using their large feet as a sail, and if there were rip currents they would be drawn offshore and lost. Their activities on fish Hoek beach are shown to great effect in the BBC’s The Blue Planet series.
I loved learning how Rocky Bank protects the western side of False Bay to some extent, slowing down the swells as they enter the bay and causing them to focus their power somewhere near the Steenbras River mouth on the opposite side of the bay.
I loved learning about limpets’ “home scars” – the spot on the rock that fits their shell perfectly, and that they somehow return to over and over after foraging for food – and how some species tend little gardens of algae, encouraging its growth by mowing paths in it (and getting fed at the same time). Simple things like the effects of strong or harsh wave action on the slope and sand type of a beach, and as a result the type of life that thrives there, were also fascinating.
I learned that 30 years ago (when this book was published) overfishing was already a serious, serious problem.
