Last July/August, Tony and I took a trip to Denmark (via the Netherlands and Germany) to see family, and then to Malta, to dive. We flew to Amsterdam with KLM, and then drove to Copenhagen. On our way back, we did the same trip in reverse.
Moon jellies in the harbour at Aabenraa in Denmark
Being fond of the sea, we visited every single little harbour that we passed – and in Denmark, there are many. Lots of Danes own sailing boats, and in summer they put them into the water and take advantage of the long days and calm seas to explore the coastline. When Tony lived in Denmark he had a boat shop, and would travel to all the little harbours doing repairs, deliveries and fittings to the boats moored there.
Moon jellies
As we travelled away from Copenhagen (we drove west across the island of Funen to Jutland, and then south towards Germany) we started to notice moon jellies in a lot of the harbours we stopped at. These photos were taken at Aabenraa (say it loudly as though you’re at the dentist).
Moon jelly
Moon jellies are found almost throughout the entire world’s oceans, and can form extremely dense concentrations that interfere with some aspects of human activity (such as cooling power stations with sea water, for example). The pinkish curly features you can see in the photos are their gonads.
View of the SAS Somerset at anchor in the V&A Waterfront
The sister ship of the SAS Fleur is the SAS Somerset, and she is moored behind the Two Oceans Aquarium at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. She’s a special vessel, being the only remaining boom defence class ship in the world. She often looks a bit drab and covered in guano, as sea gulls make their nests on her and she is clearly subject to some neglect. But when Tony and I went to the Waterfront for the Cape Town Boat Show on Heritage Day (24 September), she was looking beautifully spruced up, and we were actually able to go on board and explore.
View of the SAS Somerset at anchor in the V&A Waterfront
She was commissioned in 1941, and has been moored at the Waterfront since 1988. Boom defence vessels were also known as net tenders or net laying vessels. They deployed steel nets to deter submarines and torpedoes. The front of the ship. like the Fleur, has two steel protruding horns, as can be seen from these photos, and resembles that of a cable laying ship. When she was in use by the SA Navy she was used as a salvage vessel.
The gun at the front of the vessel
Tony exploring a companionway
Companionway down the side of the SAS Somerset
Porthole
Open hatches on deck
Pipes and valves
Winch drum
Winch drums behind the gun deck
Spare propellor secured on deck
The head!
Brass information plate
Brass valve handle
View through the ship
Luxurious accommodations
Plush toilet facilities
The captain’s bathtub
The captain’s private kitchen facilties
Captain’s office
The main mast
The bridge
Anchor on the deck at the bow
The ship’s wheel
The bridge engine control
More shiny brass
Switches on the bridge
The bow of the SAS Somerset
The funnel of the SAS Somerset
The SAS Somerset is actually a museum ship. You can find more information about her layout here. According to Iziko, she has been spruced up in order to commence service as a “training centre for safety at sea.”
The steering and navigation equipment on the bridge
The interior of the ship is replete with beautiful brass and copper fittings, which were wonderful to see. The brass on the SAS Fleur certainly doesn’t shine any more, and is also being removed, so seeing everything shiny and in its correct place was wonderful.
Tony has been alternately ragging and begging Grant for the last long while, wanting to dive the MV Aster in Hout Bay. He finally got his wish, along with me, Goot and Cecil, one magnificent weekend in early July. The sea was flat, the air was warm, and after an unseasonal week of southeasterly winds, the Atlantic was fairly clean.
The Sentinel outside Hout Bay harbour
The Aster is just outside Hout Bay harbour, fairly sheltered in the mouth of the bay. It was deliberately scuttled – by divers, for divers – in 1997. The ship was cleaned, the interior was stripped of wires and furnishings, and all doors and hatches were removed. Openings were cut into the hull of the ship, and it’s probably one of the most friendly wrecks to penetrate in Cape Town. When we dived it, Peter Southwood was venturing inside to check that his schemes of arrangement on the wikivoyage site are correct and current.
Peter Southwood’s line stretches beneath a hatch in the deck
The top of the wreck is at a depth of about 20 metres, and if you bury yourself in the sand under the ship you might get 28 metres or so. There’s a large tripod mast that extends to within 10-12 metres of the surface, and ascending next to this is a treat. The ship stands upright, alone on a sandy bottom, and the wreck of the Katsu Maru lies about 30 metres away over the sand. The Aster was a crayfishing vessel, and is about 36 metres long. There are gangways, ladders, winches, lots of superstructure, and even a railing at the bow if you want to play Titanic there (Tony did).
Reminds one of a scene from Titanic?
The Atlantic is nutrient-rich (effluent from the Disa River in Hout Bay probably also helps here) and the wreck is quite heavily encrusted. Tony observed that even though the Cedar Pride, a wreck he dived when living in Jordan, has been underwater longer than the Aster, she’s far less covered with marine life.
Hagfish on deck
Very flat anemone
The hagfish was fast asleep
Invertebrate cluster, with brittle stars
Red fanworm
Passing sea jelly at the surface, with a passenger or two
Tiny West coast rock lobster
Baby rock lobster
West coast rock lobsters on deck
Anemones, brittle stars, feather stars and mussels encrust the wreckage
I found a hagfish sleeping on deck below the mast, and we were delighted by the many tiny West coast rock lobsters all over the wreck (some large ones too). We found a couple the size of shrimps – adorable (to my mind)! There’s a lot of invertebrate life to enjoy, but I didn’t find any nudibranchs despite looking. Many of the ones found on this wreck are of the “beige with brown spots” variety and having never seen one in real life, it’s going to take a while to train my eyes to find them!
Tiny West coast rock lobster in a mussel shell
The marine life is lovely, and can absorb one for ages, but our chief enjoyment was in being on a large, intact wreck with lots of interesting shapes to look at. The tripod mast is spectacular, and there are winches, railings and cut-out compartments with windows that can all be enjoyed by a recreational diver not trained in wreck penetration. There are gangways along the side of the ship which are open on one side, and one or two areas on the deck that are overhead environments but have one whole wall missing, so a wreck penetration could be done in stages.
Cecil ascending next to the mast
The midsection of the mast
Large winch behind the superstructure
The mast rises to within 10-12 metres of the surface
The end of the winch drum
Railings and decks remain intact
A ladder from a lower to an upper gangway
Gangway on the starboard side of the ship
Mussels on the edge of the deck
Part of the superstructure of the MV Aster
Looking from the upper down onto the lower deck
Parts of the superstructure have been cut away
There are numerous holes in the deck suitable for penetration
Cecil sticks his head out of one of the holes in the deck
The bow of the MV Aster
The bow of the MV Aster
Railing on the upper deck
Cut away superstructure to allow safe penetration
We dived on 32% nitrox, and I had a fifteen litre cylinder (sheer chance!). When we started ascending I still had 25 minutes of bottom time available, having spent the bulk of the dive at around 20 metres or so, and probably could have reached my NDL on the air remaining in my cylinder. Without buddies though – no thanks! Most of the dive we were accompanied by seals, and they were playing on the surface as we climbed back into the boat.
The parking area at Hout Bay slipway, seen from the NSRI Station 8 building
Tony and I have wanted to dive Hout Bay harbour almost since he came to Cape Town two years ago. It always looks so clean and inviting as we chug out on the boat for a dive around the corner, and it has seals – lots of them! Also, no one dives there. We were thus very much looking forward to the cleanup dive organised by OMSAC on International Coastal Cleanup Day. Instead of us having to track down the harbour master and get permission to take a dip in his private lake, OMSAC did it for us. And we had a task, too – collecting garbage from the sea floor – which was pretty cool.
Bernita in action
We entered the water off the floating jetty in the marina (marked no entry except for yacht and boat owners), on the left of the NSRI building and the adjacent bar/restaurant. We would swim under the jetty, and exit the water at the slipway where the dive boats and poacher boats launch. Some of the divers managed giant strides; I did not. I was wearing a very buoyant second wetsuit, and was wearing more weight than I’ve ever used since my Open Water course. (I am ashamed to admit how much.) So when I sat down on the edge of the jetty to put on my fins, there was no getting up again, and I used the “faceplant” entry method. You won’t find that one in your PADI manual.
Much of the harbour floor looks like this
The divers were in groups of 10-12, and each of us had a coloured tag on our BCD – red, blue, green, yellow, white, etc – which was about the size of a credit card. Tony, Goot, Bernita, Corne and I were on the green team, and once our team leader and the rest of the group had hit the water, we descended. To say that Bernita and I lost everyone else instantly would be something of an understatement – the visibility was measurable in centimetres, and there was no way we were going to be able to identify other members of our team without a TSA-style full-body pat down to locate their colour tag.
An anchor on the harbour floor
No matter – the two of us completed a half hour dive, and retrieved a full bag of rubbish including a strip of rugby sock, a mysterious pink leather cuff-like object, some fishing line, some wire, and a LOT of plastic bags. I found a beer bottle at the end of the dive, and staggered up the slipway carrying it and my excessive (and, it turned out, insufficiently heavy) weight belt, probably looking as though I’d been partaking of some Castle Lager while submerged.
Bernita showing off a stripy sock that we found
Bernita and I swam holding hands a lot of the time so as not to lose one another (like children lost in a forest), with our free hands stretched out in front of us. Sometimes we could see the outstretched hands – other times, our arms disappeared before us into a cloud of silt. We tried to swim away from other divers as much as possible, because the vigorous cleanup activity (and, no doubt, some inexpert finning) stirred up clouds of thick white silt. In the clear patches, visibility was probably about 5 metres, which we found a great relief.
A shore crab in combat mode
The water is shallow, no more than four metres deep, and the bottom of the harbour has areas covered in sea lettuce, which moves uncomfortably beneath one as you swim over it, and sandy areas overrun with several kinds of crabs. There are klipfish, tiny barehead gobies, and clouds of tiny fish fry that swarm around one. It’s also very silty, and in some places the bottom seems to boil and steam when you move over it – a layer of fine dust and sand hovers just above the harbour floor, waiting for a careless move to stir it up into the water column.
Tiny box jellyfish
This isn’t a site you’ll want to put on your list of “must-dive locations”, and it’s unlikely that you’ll be allowed to dive the area without special permission. But I’m delighted that we had an opportunity to check it out… Both Tony and I love to visit working harbours and marinas, and this was a different perspective on a very familiar place.
Swarms of fish fry in the harbour
There were some intermittent reservations prior to the event about the water quality in the harbour, but it was fine, and the only people who got oiled up were those who retrieved parts of diesel engines and pool pumps. (Everyone seems to be experiencing good – unchanged, that is – digestive health after the event too!)
The third Saturday in September is International Coastal Cleanup Day. Millions of people head out en masse to pick up litter on beaches, in estuaries, and at other coastal sites. Divers around the world venture into locations that are heavily trafficked by humans, and pick up litter in the underwater environment. Last year we attended a cleanup dive in Murray Harbour on Robben Island, arranged by OMSAC. It was so enjoyable and so well organised that we decided to join OMSAC again this year, in cleaning up Hout Bay harbour.
Divers after entering the water at the floating jetty
We’ve actually been itching to check out what lies beneath the waters of Hout Bay harbour for some time. It’s a popular launch site during the summer months, and has a pleasant paved parking area with marina and mountain views. There are some hole in the wall cafes and restaurants around to provide expensive and unhealthy fare to the desperately hungry diver, and – for the non divers – the nearby Bay Harbour Market (a recently established market with much to recommend it apart from its preponderance of insufferably smug boys in tight, tapered jeans and ridiculous hats, who think that having a tufty beard at age 25 makes them seem moody and introspective – eventually someone will tell them it looks stupid, I hope). I digress.
Waiting on the surface to start the dive
Rant about obnoxious Cape Town subcultures aside, upwards (my estimate based on counting heads in the group photo!) of 80 divers converged on the parking area below NSRI Station 8 in Hout Bay harbour. After receiving our goodie bags, with an awesome Electrolux-sponsored golf shirt, a cap, a water bottle, and some sweets (I hardly saw mine except as they disappeard down Tony’s gullet!) we divided into groups of 10-15 and received coloured tags to put on our BCDs. The idea was that the groups would dive together, which reflected either extreme optimisim about the conditions underwater, or was just for show!
A Cape rock crab hides under some sea lettuce
A short briefing held upstairs in the NSRI building informed us that we would enter the water off the floating jetty in the marina, and then swim under the jetty, across the inner part of the harbour, and exit at the slipway. We were to use green mesh bags to collect the rubbish we found, using judgment when it was already inhabited or encrusted with sea life.
Representative photo of the visibility when other divers were about!
Like all harbours (because there is no water movement, as Tony explained to his ignorant wife), Hout Bay harbour is very silty, and the slightest movement stirred up great white clouds that reduced the visibility to almost nothing. Despite this, and despite a strong fear of receiving a Japanese haircut from a passing boat, Bernita and I had an exhilarating dive after losing the rest of the group almost instantly upon descent. We found all manner of items, but mostly plastic bags and a few bottles. I’ll write about the dive in a separate post.
Mounds of garbage
We surfaced near the slipway, and had to wait while a boat full of poachers (not kidding) got themselves organised and puttered off to plunder the seas around the corner. After reporting to the controllers that we were out of the water, we deposited our (smelly) bags of trash with the rest of the goods that the other divers had retrieved. Some of it was awesome stuff – several pool pumps and boat/car batteries, lots of piping, and even a GPS/fish finder unit that must have made its owner weep bitter tears as it sank expensively beneath the water.
Prizegiving inside NSRI Station 8
The prize giving was held in the NSRI common room again, and awards were given to those who had retrieved large items such as batteries and pool pumps, for the coolest piece of junk (an Arabic – I think – alphabet – I think!) and to the guy who found the GPS unit. He won a really cool vacuum cleaner from Electrolux – perhaps it’s a sign of increasing age and domesticity that I can get excited about a household appliance, but I want one of these. The oldest and youngest divers were rewarded, and there were even prizes for three divers who had to be chased back into the designated diving area by the metro dive boat. No one actually owned up to this, but we later found that Goot – one of our group – had been one of the rogue divers heading south instead of north!
Weirdest piece of garbage: an Arabic A-Z
Tony and I were given a prize for (excessive?) enthusiasm – but if the OMSAC committee thinks they’ll dissuade us from further events by embarrassing us, they’ve got another thing coming! It was a wonderful morning, well organised, with admirable safety provisions. We couldn’t believe how punctually things ran – co-ordinating such a large group of divers without incident is no mean feat.
Electrolux provided sponsorship
Primary sponsorship was from Electrolux, as part of their Vac from the Sea program, and the Plastics Federation of SA. It was good to see heavy plastic users and manufacturers getting involved in efforts to reduce plastic pollution. Proceeds of the event were donated to the NSRI.
We found this anchor, but raising it was not an option
We completed the day doing two dives on the Underwater Explorers boat, both to the MV Aster. The second dive was a boat night dive, a new experience for me since all the other night dives I’ve participated in have been off the shore! More on that another time.
Divers waiting to enter the water on the floating jetty
Bernita in Hout Bay Harbour
Some of the garbage that was retrieved from the harbour
For those of you that did not make it to the ocean last weekend I can truly say you missed out big time!! The OMSAC clean-up dive on Saturday morning was really enjoyable with some amazing articles being removed from Hout Bay harbour. True to form OMSAC ran an excellent event with everything happening on schedule. After the clean-up we dived the Asterwreck. We dived on Nitrox to maximise our bottom time and penetrated the forward hold. Goot and Gerard were doing their Nitrox specialty dives, Goot had a taste of wreck penetration, and Cecil was also test diving his new twin tank setup so we had a ‘’busy’’ dive.
Tiny basket stars on the Aster
Knobbly anemone on the Aster
Horned blenny hiding on the Aster
White-edged nudibranch on the Aster
The mast of the Aster at night
Back on dry land we waited out the sunset and then went back out to the Aster for a night dive. The conditions were great, visibility 10 -12 metres and cold water (11 degrees) on the bottom. Night dives to the deeper wrecks are more challenging than shore night dives so a big well done to the guys and girls that joined.
Goot, Tami, Tony, Clare, Gerard and Cecil, ready for a night dive on the Aster
Talks
On Tuesday evening we attended a talk and slide show at Dive Action. Barry had done some diving in a fjord in Norway and recounted the trip with a lot of info and photos of the dive centre there and the wrecks. He also talked us through the logistics of diving far from home with a few hundred kilograms of dive gear. As you know I have absolutely no knowledge of rebreathers so if you want to know more about diving with a re-breather then Barry is the man to see.
The Fernedale and the Parat side by side
As you can see in this photo (courtesy of Gulen Dive Centre, kindly shared with us by Sarah from the Dive Action team), the visibility in the fjords is something else. It was taken at around 30 metres and the wreck on the right sits on the sand at over 55 metres.
This evening we attended a talk at the Save Our Seas Shark Centre by George Branch… He is one of the authors of the Two Oceans book and is an almost legendary figure in South African marine biology. The talks at SOSSC are always very good and are always ocean related so you should make an effort to attend a few… You are never too old to learn something new!!! Visit their facebook page and like them and this way you will be informed of their activities. Their page is constantly updated with some stunning photos and lots of info on sharks.
Hyperbaric chamber
Clare and I were taken on a tour of the hyperbaric medical facility in the Kingsbury Hospital in Claremont today. It is the only chamber of its kind in Cape Town and is used for many forms of medical treatments not related to diving, but should you have a problem on a dive and get DCS, this is the place you will go! This centre is also home to one of the most respected diving doctors in South Africa. As a diver you should have DAN Medical Insurance and you should know where the nearest chamber is, how to get there and who to call. All of this information should be in your log book. Their website is here. We will post a detailed report of this visit on the blog soon. This is a fully equipped medical facility and a lot different to the chamber we did our 50 metre chamber dive in!
What we are going to get up to
Training
Saturday is pool day and if you want to join and play with your gear and buoyancy text me before 2pm Friday. The cost to scuba dive in the pool (if you’re not on course) is R50, and if you just want to swim it’s R7. We are still busy with Deep and Nitrox Specialties which we will continue with early Sunday morning, launching out of Hout Bay at 7.30am. The boat takes 14 and we are already confirmed for 10 people so text me quickly if you are in.
After the boat dive we will move to False Bay and then do dive 3 & 4 for a few Open Water students. If the conditions are good we will try the Clan Stuart or A Frame. The visibility in the bay at the moment is 10 – 15 metres and despite some southeaster for the next two day I doubt it will do too much harm so diving will be good.
Scubapro Day – 1 October
Scubapro are having a ScubaPro Day in the Simon’s Town yacht basin on 1 October. They will allow you to test dive the latest gear from their range. There will be food, drinks and goodie bags plus lots of divers and other kinds of people. Boat dives are going to cost R100 and R25 gets you a goodie bag and registration at the event. I have booked 12 places on two dives on the boat, big brother to this boat.
Ruby Runner’s little cousin, spotted in Germany
If you want to participate you need to book and you need to do this soon. Boat dives at R100 don’t come round too often so book this week or lose out. You will need to book and pay by Tuesday next week for this event. The dives are at 8.00am and 2.00pm.
Travels
There is a trip to Mozambique on the weekend 4-6 of November. It is a five dive/three night package that starts at R1850. You will need to mail me for more info as it is a trip shared with a dive centre in Durban and will need some quick decisions.
Reminders
A diver is currently in jail in Cape Town for diving without a permit… Don’t let it be you… Get a permit if you don’t have one.
Book for the boat for Sunday and October 1 (ScubaPro Day) NOW!
Valve handles in dodgy visibility on the SAS Fleur
Last weekend we dived the SAS Fleur. This rates as the best wreck dive in Cape Town, in my book. It is closely followed by the MV Aster which we plan to dive and penetrate this weekend. Back to the Fleur: we did not have exceptional visibility (about 6 metres – Clare apologises for the dodgy pictures), and the current was quite strong at depth. But as we were doing a Deep Specialty, on Nitrox, this was a perfect site. We had lots of seals during the dive and many stayed with us during our deep stop and the extended 5 metre safety stop.
Being photo-bombed by seals at the safety stop on the Fleur
After the Fleur we did two dives at Long Beach, being dive 1 & 2 for Open Water students. We visited the new Lady Long Beach reef project being built by Pisces Dive Centre.
Slightly beaten up cuttlefish at Long Beach
Many have heard of the sardine run, well Steve Benjamin from Animal Ocean will be doing a squid run, in Cape St Francis. Diving 25th Oct – 29th Oct (5 days), this is just as the Commercial squid season closes. Visit his website for more info and look at some of the sardine run photos.
Tami approaching a swarm of box jellies at Long Beach
This weekend
This weekend we are diving in Hout Bay harbour on Saturday morning as part of the clean up dive organised by OMSAC. Diving starts at 9.00 am and even if you are not diving come along and join the fun. The harbour will be alive with divers, boats and humans. This is also a very photogenic part of Cape Town so bring your camera.
If you plan to participate in the cleanup dive, you must register beforehand – visit the OMSAC website for more details.
You must ensure you have your dive card AND your MPA permit with you on Saturday.
Compass sea jelly at the deep stop on the Fleur
We have booked two dives for the afternoon with Underwater Explorers (you may remember Alistair from this post). At 2.00 pm we will do a dive to the Aster wreck, lay lines and do some penetration. Entering the wreck is not for everyone and some of the divers will stay outside while a few of us are inside. We will also attach a few cyalumes as we are doing the second dive there at 6.30 pm.
There is still space on the afternoon dive but the night dive is almost full… Speak up quickly if you want to join. We will be making a day of it so bring chairs, braai stuff and chocolate. We have also ordered sun so bring sunscreen.
There are a lot of people doing these dives on Saturday so it’s important you mail me to book any gear you want to rent. I have bought a few more wetsuits, BCDs, cylinders and regulators so I am sure we will manage but don’t wait until Saturday to let me know what you need – I’ll pack on Friday evening and leave home very early on Saturday. I also only have 6 torches to rent. You can of course go and buy these things from Andre‘s shop in Simon’s Town – email him here!
Sunday we are doing dive 3 & 4 for Open Water and if conditions are good we will dive the Clan Stuart or Windmill. Meeting time will be 10.30 as all my cylinders will be empty from the night dive and I only have one bicycle pump.
Bits and pieces of the Fleur
Travel plans
The planning of a Mozambique trip is taking shape and within a few weeks we will have a solid plan. We will most likely go to Ponta Do Ouro and will do the same thing we did for the Sodwana trips: fly to Durban, rent cars and have cheap tents or upmarket chalet options for accommodation. Car sharing, tent sharing and sleeping bag sharing… are all options. If you missed the last two trips then you won’t know how much fun we had but you can read all about it here.
Salps at Long Beach
(For more information on exactly what a salp is, check out Wikipedia. They’re alive!)
Talks
There is a talk by Barry, the owner of Dive Action, at the Dive Action shop next Tuesday evening on diving in Norway with stunning pictures. Free, starts at 6.30pm.
On Wednesday night there is a talk at 7.00pm by George Branch, author of the classic The Living Shores of South Africa and expert on all things marine biology-related, at the Save Our Seas Foundation Shark Centre in Kalk Bay. The topic is evolution, and the cost is R50. (It’s for a good cause and you also get soup and rolls.) Save Our Seas foundation does many things but the Kalk Bay centre focuses on shark conservation. They also have a marine tank that is amazing… You get to see that too. The talks here are always very good and worth the money.
Text me if you are coming to either talk (booking is essential for the Save Our Seas talk) and I will book for you and send you directions. (Well actually Clare will!)
The weather has been kind this week and we had really good diving on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Cape water took a little getting used to again for me because the last dive I did in Malta was in 24 degree water…
Conditions this week were clean and clear
But when we dived on Wednesday we visited the artificial reef we are working on at Long Beach, and it showed a lot of happiness and life. It is amazing how quickly and thoroughly the items we placed in the water have been colonised.
Artificial reef materials – before
The vase, newly placed in the water
The vase looks quite different now, two months later
International Coastal Cleanup Day
Saturday 17 September is International Coastal Cleanup Day, and this year we will again be joining OMSAC as they clean up Hout Bay Harbour. Each diver is issued with a mesh bag, and collects garbage from the dive location. A bit of judgment is required, because sometimes a piece of junk has been so grown over and inhabited by marine life that you’d do worse removing it than if you just left it there! If you’ve driven through Hout Bay Harbour on the way to a dive site in the Atlantic, you’ll know it’s usually sheltered, calm, and visited by massive seals!
Coffee jar freshly situated in the water
The information sign, newly placed in the water
The sign has barnacles growing on it now
This is an opportunity to dive in a place you wouldn’t usually be able to, and to do something good for the environment. It’ll be easy, shallow diving and there will be food on sale and a nice crowd of people to meet. Clare and I participated in their clean-up of Robben Island Harbour last year, and it was an incredibly well organised and enjoyable day out.
A small shyshark has made one of the coffee jars his home
Registration is R25 and if you want to come along you must arrange this directly with OMSAC. There is more information about how to register on the OMSAC home page.
Weekend diving
Diving this weekend is difficult to predict because of the weather. A large storm is expected on Sunday/Monday which brings massive swell and strong winds. The boats are not going out, but anyone who wants to dive please let me know, and if conditions permit on Saturday we will find a sheltered shore entry or two to explore.
Deep Dark and Dangerous: On the Bottom with the Northwest Salvage Divers – Rebecca Harrison
Deep Dark and Dangerous
Harrison tells the stories of the pioneers of the salvage diving profession, those men and women who worked – some over 100 years ago – in the cold, murky depths of the Pacific Ocean off Oregon, Washington state and Alaska in the USA. Their courage and the difficulty of the conditions they worked in is palpable. Many of these divers learned the trade from their fathers and uncles. Their work encompassed salvage of cargoes, demolition, search and recovery, and construction of harbours, bridges and other structures… All underwater.
This is definitely a history book – there’s nothing about the current state of the salvage diving industry. The stories are personal and clearly many of them are sourced from living relatives of the divers, and some from the surviving divers themselves. It’s well illustrated with photos of the divers, their gear, and their team members.
If you have an interest in commercial diving, or in the history of diving, this is a good place to start. For more on what being a commercial diver entails today, check out Bottom Time. You can get the book here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise go here. If you want to read it on your Kindle, go here.
When I met Tony he was living in Mozambique, and when his visa ended he moved to Durban. Around that time we had decided we quite enjoyed each other’s company, so I flew up every second weekend to visit him. He was working at Calypso Dive and Adventure Centre at uShaka Marine World as an Instructor and Divemaster, so I tagged along on dives on the Saturday mornings I was in town. I was a fairly new diver at the time (it was September 2009).
It was the first time I’d come up to Durban to see him, and he had a student who had to do a deep dive on the Saturday morning. The boat was heading out to the Coopers Lighthouse wreck, a mysterious ship lying in 24-32 metres of water whose identity is not certain. Some people think it’s an old whaler, but there are several theories as to its origin. The wreck is thought to be about 100 years old and situated in line with the Cooper Lighthouse on the Bluff.
The rubber duck left the beach at 0700. The sea was looking quite bumpy, and the boat ride wasn’t great. I am not the best sailor, but as long as the boat is moving I’m fine. It’s about a 25 minute ride through shipping lanes, south of Durban harbour.
There was a howling current when we arrived at the site, and while we kitted up on the boat we drifted some way from the shot line hooked to the wreck. The sea was horrible – I alternated vomiting over the side (so embarrassing) with doing up clips on my BCD! Once we were ready, the skipper circled round and dropped us close to the shot line, but on the wrong side – so the current was taking us away from the line rather than towards it. I was with Tony, and his student – who was on the other side of the boat – had managed to get to the shot line and was holding on for dear life. In the current, his body was horizontal, like a flag in a strong wind.
Tony and I swam and swam, for what felt like an hour. We were swimming into the current at about 10 metres depth, but I think we were either standing still or moving backwards (it must have looked quite funny, if you were in that sort of mood). We could see Tony’s student, and we could see the shot line ahead of us, and then it just seemed to vanish. By that time the student had joined us, and the current had taken us out of sight of the line.
I wasn’t quite sure what we would do at that point, but Tony had a plan, which he explained to me later, on dry land. We descended to about 20 metres, and stayed there for about 20 minutes. The three of us were hanging in the blue ocean – no sign of the bottom – surrounded by shoals of fish. We could have surfaced immediately when we lost the shot line, but then we’d have had to spend the duration of the dive sitting on the boat, which was being tossed about like a cork. (I’d already demonstrated low tolerance for this kind of activity by chumming the local fish life while kitting up.) That’s if the boat had even found us – the skipper wouldn’t be expecting divers to surface after only ten minutes, and the conditions were not conducive to him spotting us as soon as we surfaced.
After about 20 minutes we began our ascent, doing a safety stop at 5 metres with an SMB deployed. When we reached the surface, the sea was mountainous. There was no sign of the boat, and even if it had been five metres away from us we’d have struggled to see it because of the size of the waves. Tony clipped our BCDs together so that we would drift more slowly (larger surface area to offer resistance to the current), and told me to keep my regulator in my mouth becuase the waves were so big. (It was on this dive that I discovered that you can vomit through a regulator… useful fact to keep in mind…)
Then we waited. The bright orange SMB stuck up between us, and in between gags I scanned the horizon (which was not very large, thanks to the waves) for the boat. The three of us floated there for 55 minutes before the boat found us. After being hauled aboard like a drowned rat I heaved over the side for good measure and then concentrated on my lollipop.
The skipper told Tony he’d been driving around looking for us, cursing Tony for not having an SMB deployed. We did – but the waves were so big that the boat was practically on top of us before it could be seen. If we hadn’t had an SMB, I very much doubt they would have found us without the aid of the NSRI.
Different sized reels and surface marker buoys (SMB)
For the uninitiated, SMB stands for Surface Marker Buoy. They’re generally tubes of orange, red or yellow plastic, that you inflate by inserting your octo or regulator at the bottom, and purging it. It’s generally considered good practice to deploy an SMB at the safety stop when you’re on a boat dive – it warns other boats of your presence, signals that you’re ok, and gives your skipper an indication of where to come and fetch you.
If you get lost on the surface, a SMB is essential. You’re not very visible dressed from head to toe in black, and that orange tube might be the only difference between a very long time drifting on the surface, and a quick rescue. They fold up really small, and with a little practice are very straightforward to deploy. If you’re diving off a boat, or in an unfamiliar location, make sure you pack your SMB.
