I would love to be writing to you, claiming a weekend ahead with stunning dive conditions…. But I am not. The week has had some looooong period large (i.e. Dungeons) sized swell. Although the swell drops off for the weekend, the wind (mostly northerly) and its strength (strong), don’t look all that great.
Heart-shaped sea star
I am out on the boat tomorrow and the conditions should be the same for Saturday so if it’s good… I will change my plans, otherwise it is most likely going to be a dry weekend. If you want the option of diving based on tomorrow’s conditions, let me know.
What to do if you find a stranded sea turtle?
A tiny little chap was found at Kommetjie this past week. If you find a stranded turtle, keep it dry, and transport it as soon as possible to your nearest turtle rescue point. If you’re in Cape Town, this is most likely the Two Oceans Aquarium directly, or the Shark Spotters info centre at Muizenberg, who will make sure the turtle gets to the aquarium for rehabilitation and future release. Read more about what to do on the Two Oceans Aquarium website, here.
False Bay has not been too shabby at all, and the visibility has been rather good. There is some hectic wind and rain in the forecast for Saturday, but by Sunday it is mostly over.
We are not launching this weekend, but my suggestion would be a boat dive for Sunday to get clear of the run off from the heavy rain, however there are sometimes shore dive sites with crystal clear water after the wind and rain. Best you take a drive and look before you leap, and pack a flask of hot chocolate for after the dive.
Danger Beach in False Bay
Tidal pools
Cape Town’s tidal pools are a national treasure. The City of Cape Town has been experimenting with an environmentally friendly cleaning protocol, to preserve the abundant marine life that these pools house. In order to effect the cleaning more efficiently, a high pressure hose would help. Does the city have budget allocated for it? No, of course not. (We’re showering with buckets, remember.) Are some enterprising ocean lovers running a crowd funding campaign to get one for the city to use? You betcha. Donate here. They’re almost at their target. It’s worth it.
Our boat is booked this weekend so I won’t be running any dives. The weekend weather does look good for a dive, however, specially on Saturday.
The NSRI pink rescue buoy in Simons Town
Tales of Surf Rescue
The Two Oceans Aquarium is hosting a fundraiser for the NSRI pink rescue buoy campaign on Wednesday 30 May, at which comedian (and surfer) Nik Rabinowitz will interview a posse of big wave surfers. Event details are on facebook, and tickets are from Quicket.
Between the Tides: In Search of Sea Turtles – George Hughes
I have been late in coming to this book, which was published about five years ago. George Hughes is a world-renowned, South African turtle scientist whose work has done much to ensure protection for sea turtles in the southern Indian Ocean. He was the guest speaker at an event held at the Two Oceans Aquarium to celebrate the release of Yoshi, the loggerhead turtle who spent over 20 years at the aquarium and is now powering along the Namibian coastline in rude health.
Between the Tides
Dr Hughes was CEO of the Natal Parks Board and then Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, but Between the Tides relates his early career as a student looking for turtles along South Africa’s wild north east coast, in places that today support thriving dive and fishing charters. His legacy of turtle research continues.
Turtle surveys were conducted around Madagascar, the Comores, Reunion, the Seychelles, and on the Mozambique coast. The fact that the iSimangaliso Wetland Park now exists, offering a protected and well-regulated breeding environment for three species of turtles (loggerhead, leatherback and green – discovered there in 2014) is thanks to the early and persistent work of Dr Hughes and his colleagues. Turtles were first found nesting on this piece of coast in 1963, when it was still completely wild and mostly neglected by the authorities. In this book Dr Hughes recounts the development of the tagging program that he started, in which over 350,000 hatchlings were flipper tagged and/or marked over a period of 31 years.
Only about two out of every 1,000 hatchlings survive to return to the area in which they hatched, to breed. Female loggerheads are estimated to reach maturity around the age of 36 years, during which time they navigate an ocean of threats. This makes every surviving hatchling incredibly valuable.
The recovery of the number of loggerheads, in particular, has been quite spectacular, with more modest but noticeable gains in the leatherback population. More recently, as technology has allowed it, satellite tagging has shown their movements around the Indian ocean
If you find a baby sea turtle on the beach (this is the time of year when they start washing up), here is what you should do. The most important thing is to keep it dry, and to contact the aquarium as soon as possible.
Dr Hughes also discusses the sustainable use of sea turtles (for example, for food), something which I’d never thought about and which for that reason is fascinating – and very challenging to come at with an open mind, and appreciating the viewpoints of a scientist who has been steeped in turtle research for most of his life. This is an excellent, proudly South African marine science book, written to be accessible even to those who aren’t turtle fanatics a priori. Highly recommended.
Get a copy of the book here (South Africa), here or here.
Boat dives on Sunday or Monday / Shore dives on Monday (conditions dependent)
Traditionally Easter is a difficult time for diving. Many people are away and the weather does not always play ball. Add to this the traffic congestion from the Two Oceans marathonon Saturday… This weekend we may dive from Hout Bay on Sunday or Monday, or perhaps shore dives from Long Beach, wind dependent.
We are out tomorrow on a full day private charter but I do think Long Beach will be a good option if you feel like shore diving.
We send well wishes to everyone celebrating a religious observance this weekend. For those of you who celebrate Easter, here’s an egg for you:
Catshark egg on a sea fan
Plastic and Water
On the marathon topic, watch this video and see how the Two Oceans Aquarium and Old Mutual are teaming up to reduce the use and impact of single use plastic, and learn about the aquarium’s turtle rehabilitation program.
This article on how to responsibly stockpile (or just purchase) bottled water, is very helpful if you’re working on water security at home, but don’t want to contribute to an environmental apocalypse.
Here’s an only half serious take on some of the suggestions I’ve heard to deal with Cape Town’s water crisis. These are solutions that I’ve seen proposed to magically, quickly save us from the catastrophic water shortage we are facing in Cape Town, usually by people reluctant to adjust their own water consumption to face the new normal. They are mostly ridiculous, and fun to mythbust using an extremely low-level bastardisation of Fermi estimation. (They’ve put me fondly in mind of Prof Hahn’s first year applied maths lecture in which he instructed us to estimate the volume of a cow by assuming – to make the maths easier – that it was spherical in shape.) I digress:
Can we tow an iceberg from Antarctica to melt for fresh water?
PhD student Neil Malan wrote a detailed explanation of why this is an infeasible (I’m being polite here) idea. Here’s a highlight…
Icebergs are large, and heavy. Therefore, in order to get a decent-sized (say 20 km long) iceberg it is estimated that some twenty large oceangoing tugs would be needed to move the iceberg the 6 000 odd kilometres from the Southern Ocean to Cape Town. This would be done at a speed of approximately one knot, thus making a journey of 250 days to reach the Cape and losing about 40% of its mass along the way.
… and here’s the whole article, which I urge you to read in order to get a sense of some of the scales (distance, volume, time) involved in such a proposal.
Does anyone sane and respectable think it can be done? Well, yes, actually – salvage master Nick Sloane (who righted the Costa Concordia, and who is a singularly impressive individual), thinks it is a feasible solution. Judge for yourself who is right – listen to his comments on Cape Talk radio and weigh them up against Neil Malan’s reservations.
Theewaterskloof dam (Cape Town’s primary water supply) in August 2017, 24% full
Can we supply water to Cape Town using water tankers from other parts of South Africa?
Let’s do some maths. At current water usage rates, Cape Town is using more than 500 megalitres (million litres) of water per day. Let’s round it down to 500 for ease of calculation. If we divide 500,000,000 by 24 (to get usage per hour), and then by 60 (to get usage per minute), and again by 60 (to get usage per second), we arrive at a figure of 5,787 kilolitres per second. (Just pause on that for a moment – it’s a big number.)
If a tanker truck can carry 20,000 litres, it’ll take one of these trucks arriving about every three seconds, around the clock, to provide enough water for the city. Let’s generously assume that such a truck can be filled, drive to Cape Town, offload its water, and return to its point of origin (which would have to be somewhere far away that has spare water – an entirely mythical place in South Africa at present) in 24 hours. If we multiply 24 hours by 60 minutes by 60 seconds divided by three (we only need a truck every three seconds, remember), we’ll need 28,800 tanker trucks running continuously to provide Cape Town’s water.
I can tell you, with great certainty, that there aren’t that many tanker trucks in South Africa, let alone unused tanker trucks with nothing to do other than drive back and forth bringing water to the Cape. (Who’s going to pay for this? Where will the water come from? Where will they park? Another story.) One water tanker costs in the ballpark of R1.3 million. A few tens of them are usually procured at a time, not thousands.
Think I’m being greedy asking for 500 megalitres per day? Let’s halve our water usage; then we’ll only need 14,400 tankers on the road. Think we should also rather calculate using 40,000 litre trucks? Then we’ll only need 7,200 tankers. STILL TOO MANY.
Can we build a long pipe from the Orange River to Cape Town, to bring us water?
Assuming that there was spare water in the Orange River (there’s not – almost all of it is allocated to agriculture), could we build a pipeline to bring it to Cape Town? We’re talking a distance of 600-800 kilometres here.
Pipelines are expensive and it’s hard to pull numbers out of the air, so let’s look at a South African example. The Gariep pipeline, from the Gariep dam to Mangaung in the Free State, was proposed in 2015. It was to be 180 kilometres long and to cost R2 billion. It would transport 130 megalitres of water per day (about 20 percent of Cape Town’s current daily water usage).
If we multiply R4.5 billion by three, because our imaginary pipeline is at least three times the length of the Gariep pipeline, we arrive at a figure of 13.5 billion ZARs. For a mere 8.5 billion ZARs, we could build a desalination plant that would supply 450 megalitres per day. This is about two thirds of recent usage, and our actual target usage under level 6B water restrictions, using water that is definitely there (the sea) instead of water that isn’t (spare capacity in the Orange River). We could buy some chocolate with the R5 billion left over.
Could we build a 600 kilometre pipeline quickly enough to help our current situation? These things take a long time, and in South Africa we don’t have a track record of speedy project completions, corruption-free tender processes, and trouble-free execution of projects. We can look to this 40 kilometre pipeline near Durban for an idea of how long a big project like this could take; phase two of the project was commenced in 2012, and completion “was expected” by mid-2017. So for a 600 kilometre project, are we looking at 75 years to completion?
Can’t we dig the dams deeper so that they store more water?
Cumulative annual rainfall at our weather station in Sun Valley
The problem is not that the dams are not deep enough, it’s that there has not been enough rain to fill them. Here’s a helpful interview with the regional head for the Department of Water and Sanitation.
While we’re talking about this, when building a dam the engineers don’t typically go out and dig a big hole to fill with water. Dams are typically structures that block river valleys, allowing the river to flood the land behind the dam wall as the natural course of the water flow is obstructed. Whatever used to be on the land – farms, homes, wildlife – can’t be there any more.
A cubic metre of soil weighs at least 1.5 tons (obviously depends on the type of soil), and removing this would make space for one kilolitre of water. Theewaterskloof Dam has a capacity of 480 million cubic metres (480 million kilolitres) of water.
What does this much water look like? Well, if we put our Fermi estimation hats on and approximate the dimensions of just the flat-topped part of Table Mountain by a right rectangular prism with dimensions of 1,000 metres (height), 1,000 metres (length) and 200 metres (width), we arrive at a volume for the iconic flat bit of Table Mountain – minus the skirt that sprawls towards Camps Bay, Rondebosch, and the City Bowl, and the Twelve Apostles and the rest of the chain that spreads down the peninsula – of 200 million cubic metres. We could thus hide Table Mountain twice over (broken into bits, obvs) in Theewaterskloof dam and it still wouldn’t be full.
Theewaterskloof dam was built at the head of a valley where farmers once grew grape vines. You can see the dead vines sticking out of the sand now, when you visit the dam. There isn’t one big river that runs into the dam, but numerous small streams as well as the general runoff from the catchment area around the dam, which is about 500 square kilometres in extent. If the total volume of the dam had to be excavated, rather than using a natural valley, you’d be left with at least 720 millon tons of earth to dispose of. A Table Mountain-sized problem.
But the United Nations says that water is one of my human rights, so the taps can’t run dry!
Ignoring the fact that if there is no water, then your “human right” can’t be catered for, it is instructive to read what the UN actually says about the right to water and sanitation. I refer you to this media brief (pdf), which sets it out in some detail, with examples.
The amount of water you are entitled to is not unlimited. Between the UN and South Africa’s Constitutional Court the recommended amount is somewhere between 25 and 50 litres, and it is not required to be free (it simply has to be “affordable”). Page 7 of the media brief corrects some of the common misconceptions around this human right.
Anyway – my view of human rights, particularly in a country as thoroughly damaged as South Africa, where I am emphatically not one of the most vulnerable or disadvantaged members of the population, is that my rights are to whatever I can provide for myself. There are far more needy and less able people than I, and in terms of state or municipal or welfare assistance, their needs have to come first.
Enough already
This is ridiculous, and I’m tired. Solutions to water crisis? Use less water. No, less than that. Practise radical personal responsibility. No one is coming to help, except perhaps – if you are extremely lucky – friends and neighbours. Collect rainwater in your personal capacity so that you rely less on municipal supply. Recycle water in your home (grey water for flushing, hand washing, gardening), and continue to do this even if things return to some semblance of the way they were three years ago. Think about how you will cope with Day Zero.
In my inexpert opinion the city should immediately start to build capacity to treat and re-use waste water. In the long term, solutions such as desalination on a medium to large scale, and (if carefully managed) tapping into the aquifers will become very important to ensure the city’s water resilience as the climate in the Western Cape becomes drier and windier. Desalination as a short term, small-scale, temporary solution is laughable. So is drilling into the aquifers without knowledge of their capacity, without proper plans to recharge them (fascinating witchcraft), and without a scientific understanding of how much water it is reasonable to abstract on an ongoing basis. Peace out.
Capetonians are familiar with the tea-coloured water that runs in our mountain streams. Most people know that the brown colour comes from tannins, leached naturally from the indigenous fynbos vegetation. Perhaps less well known is the reason for the brown water that is sometimes seen in the surf zone along Muizenberg beach, stretching all the way to Strandfontein, Monwabisi and beyond.
Tea-coloured water at Muizenberg
The most frequent explanations that are offered on social media are, of course, pollution, “raw sewage”, and the like. This is not the reason for the brown water, and it does not necessarily impact the water’s safety or healthfulness for humans to swim in.
Like False Bay’s famous colour fronts, the reason for the brown waves at Muizenberg beach turns out to have much to do with the topography of False Bay, particularly of the kilometres-long beach at its head (Muizenberg-Strandfontein-Macassar-Monwabisi), and something called a diatom.
View of Muizenberg showing patches of brown water
Diatoms
Diatoms are a type of phytoplankton (plant plankton or microalgae). They are single celled, usually symmetrically shaped organisms that multiply by dividing in half at a constant rate. Their cell walls are made of silica, SiO2. Chicken keepers and gardeners may be familiar with diatomaceous earth – this is made up of the fossilised shells of ancient diatoms.
Diatoms are what are called primary producers or autotrophs, meaning that they generate organic material from carbon dioxide and other inorganic nutrients (for example nitrates and phosphates), through the process of photosynthesis, which uses light as an energy source. Primary producers sit at the base of the food chain and all life relies on them, directly or indirectly. Everything else produces organic material from other organic material (such as diatoms).
I am telling you all about diatoms because the brown water at Muizenberg contains an accumulation of a diatom that you can call Anaulus australis Drebes et Schultz the first time you mention it, but usually just Anaulus australis, or Anaulus for short. There are several members of the genus Anaulus, but usually just one tends to be dominant at each beach where these accumulations occur, and Anaulus australis is the main species found along the South African coast.
Analaus are pillow-shaped diatoms. If you wanted to see what an individual Anaulus diatom looked like, you’d use a microscope, but when enough of them are in one place, they can be seen to change the colour of the water. There’s a picture of them under a microscope at the bottom of this webpage (they also occur in Brazil). They occur at beaches with particular topograhical characteristics, which explains why you haven’t seen them at Camps Bay, Kogel Bay, or Scarborough.
At hospitable beaches, the diatoms are always there, spending much of the time lying dormant in the sand behind the surf zone. A proportion of the diatom population is able to survive for relatively long periods (estimated to be more than two months) like this, in the dark on the seabed, not photosynthesising or dividing, until the correct meteorological conditions arise for an accumulation. But first – what sorts of beaches are hospitable to Anaulus?
a nutrient source close to the surf zone (often an unconfined aquifer overlaid by a dune field)
Muizenberg and Strandfontein beach tick all these boxes. The beach stretches from Surfers Corner all the way across the top of False Bay to Monwabisi, a distance of over 20 kilometres. It is a high energy beach, meaning that it is exposed to large waves and strong winds, and is not protected by any offshore features such as sandbars or headlands that might reduce the force of the waves. Rip currents do occur at the beach, and both these and the exceptionally wide surf zone – wider during south easterly winds in summer – can be observed from the mountainside on Boyes Drive. (A rip current is like a hidden river flowing out to sea from the beach. The Sydney Morning Herald has an excellent visual explainer of rip currents here.)
The head of False Bay where Muizenberg is situated is incredibly nutrient-rich, much of it thanks to urbanisation. The canalised Zandvlei estuary – the only vaguely functional one on False Bay’s coast – is situated a short distance down the beach, and supplies nitrates, phosphates and other nutrients to the surf zone. Many of these nutrients are technically pollutants, added to the river further upstream. The Cape Flats Waste Water Treatment plant at Strandfontein also discharges 200 million litres of treated water per day (under normal, non-drought circumstances) via a canal onto Strandfontein beach. This is essentially an artificial estuary for Zeekoevlei. This waste water has spent some time working its way through the settlement ponds at Strandfontein, but is nevertheless rich in ammonia and other nutrients, and Anaulus accumulations are a very common sight in the surf around this discharge point. The dunes that run along Baden Powell drive overlay a high water table, and groundwater seepage – specially during times of heavy rainfall – may also leach nutrients out of the ground and into the surf zone.
Meteorological conditions
The meteorological conditions required for an Anaulus accumulation involve strong wind and a large swell. These act together to create rough sea conditions, which stir up the dormant diatoms from the ocean floor. The diatoms adhere to air bubbles in the surf zone, staying suspended in the water column, which is when you would notice the water turning brown. Exposed to light, they awaken from their dormant state and start to photosynthesise, take up nutrients, divide and multiply. The presence of rip currents creates an onshore-offshore flow all along the beach. This forms a semi-closed ecosystem, and the diatoms are essentially trapped in gyres in the waves. Longshore currents that run parallel to the beach transport Anaulus cells out of the surf zone at one end, and bring fresh (sea)water in at the other end of the beach.
It may seem surprising that anything manages to accumulate in the waves of a beach, but the surf zone is actually quite retentive, meaning that things that end up there often tend to stay there. (Incidentally, this is why it’s a terrible idea to discharge the byproduct of reverse osmosis seawater desalination – a super-salty brine – into the surf zone. It must be discharged offshore so that it can disperse and mix with the surrounding water.)
Diatoms in the surf zone at Muizenberg
You’ll notice that, contrary to what you may have seen when large amounts of plankton are under discussion, I’ve been using the word “accumulation” instead of “bloom” to talk about Anaulus. This is deliberate, because of the constant presence and constant rate of division of the diatoms. When the water goes brown, it doesn’t mean that Anaulus is suddenly multiplying faster than usual. It means that it’s all been gathered together in patches, is exposed to light and therefore photosynthesising (at its usual steady rate), and is thus more visible than it was when it was lying on the ocean floor.
Anaulus at Muizenberg in November 2017
The human factor
You may also be thinking that everything I’ve said about the nutrients that Anaulus requires to survive and thrive points to the fact that humans – and pollution – are ultimately responsible for these brown-water plankton accumulations at Muizenberg. Well yes, in a way. But accumulations of Anaulus australis and related species have been observed and documented for well over 100 years at suitable beaches around the world, and are a natural phenomenon.
Yes, we are providing more nutrients to the False Bay diatom population than they would otherwise have received without human settlement in the greater Cape Town area, but these accumulations would likely occur regardless. They are certainly more intense now than they would have been in the past, but estuaries are nutrient-rich locations even when not surrounded by a large city. Furthermore, the water table is high on the Cape Flats, which would supply nutrients to the surf zone regardless of whether humans lived nearby.
Anaulus is in fact performing a vital and useful function by mopping up the excess nutrients that the city discharges in the ocean. The mass of diatoms – primary producers – also provides a food source to bivalves such as mussels, and other invertebrates. We can be grateful that the excess nutrients that urbanisation directs towards the ocean at the head of False Bay leads only to accumulations of harmless diatoms, rather than to frequent occurrences of harmful algal blooms that can kill marine life and exacerbate respiratory problems in humans.
Muizenberg during a diatom aggregation
Sources
Most of the original scientific study on surf zone diatoms in South Africa was done by a group of researchers (primarily M Talbot, Eileen Campbell and Guy Bate) from the University of Port Elizabeth, working at the Sundays River Beach in the Eastern Cape. I did quite a bit of reading to research this post, but you can start with this paper for a description of the topographical characteristics of beaches where surf zone diatoms accumulate. The first few chapters of this Masters thesis also provide a good overall survey of what is known about surf zone diatoms.
Putting knowledge into practice
Not every instance of brown, foamy water at the beach will be an Anaulus accumulation. On the west coast of South Africa, for example, there are no beaches where Anaulus occurs, but you may see brownish foam that is the result of heavy wave action frothing up organic matter in the surf (nothing sinister – there is a lot of organic material in the ocean). A clue to help you distinguish diatom accumulations from other brown-water phenomena – apart from running through the checklist of required beach characteristics above – is that an Anaulus accumulation doesn’t stretch much beyond the back of the surf zone. If the brown water stretches beyond the furthest row of waves, it’s probably something else. (And this seems like an apposite time to remind you that sewage looks whitish-grey, not brown, when it’s pumped out into the ocean.)
The number of beaches worldwide where surf zone diatom accumulations occur is so small – less than 100 – that Odebrecht et al could enumerate them in a 2013 paper. I hope this helps to convince you that the brown water at Muizenberg beach (and beyond) is something special and interesting, not to be feared. Go surfing!
Early in November I attended an information session at the Kalk Bay Community Centre, where the City of Cape Town announced that they will be trialling an environmentally friendly cleaning process on five of the 19 tidal pools on the 260 kilometres of Cape Town’s coastline managed by the City. This coast stretches from Silwerstroom on the West Coast to Kogel Bay on the eastern shores of False Bay.
St James tidal pool
The presentation was made by team members from the City’s Recreation and Parks department, which – among other things – is responsible for beaches, outdoor signage, ablutions, lifesaving, environmental education, and administration of Blue Flag status for the beaches and marinas that earn it. This department is also responsible for the tidal pools. (Incidentally the City’s assortment of safe seawater bathing facilities includes two of the largest tidal pools in the southern hemisphere, at Monwabisi and Strand.)
Until now, the City would use chlorine to clean the walls (top and sides) and steps in the tidal pools. The cleaning would be done after draining the pool completely. This year, a supply chain management issue meant that there was no cleaning of the tidal pools between July and November. During this time, regular swimmers (some of them members of the Sea-Change project) noticed that marine life flourished in the pools, and engaged with the City to try to find a way to keep the tidal pools safe but also to preserve the diversity of marine species that had been thriving in the pools during the cleaning hiatus. Safety, of course, is why they are cleaned: slippery, algae-covered steps are dangerous.
The tidal pool at Millers Point
It was agreed that five of the pools – St James, Dalebrook, Wooley’s Pool, and the two pools at Kalk Bay station – would be subject to a trial of a new, environmentally friendly cleaning regimen. These pools are relatively close together in the north western corner of False Bay. The aim is still to ensure that the tops of the pool’s walls and steps are not slippery, and thus safe for bathers. But a second aim has been added by the City, which is to ensure the environmental integrity of the pools.
Under the new cleaning protocol, the following will be done:
the pools will be drained only when necessary, and only as far as is required to reach areas that are covered by water and in need of cleaning (for example, the steps at Dalebrook)
animals in harm’s way will be relocated
excess kelp and sea urchins will be removed from the pools
the tops of the walls and steps will be scraped to remove algae (the sides of the walls used to be scraped too, but this will no longer take place)
environmentally friendly chemicals will be used to remove the algal residue after scraping – no more chlorine and no more whitewashing!
All of the above means that the pools will be ready for use by the public immediately after cleaning, in contrast to the old protocol, which renders the pool unusable for a period after the cleaning crew has chlorined it.
I’ve asked the City for more information about the drainage procedure, and for more information about the earth-friendly chemicals that the cleaning contractor will use, but with no response so far. (If I get one I’ll obviously update this post.)
Buffels Bay tidal pool inside the Cape Point section of Table Mountain National Park
Many of the City of Cape Town’s tidal pools fall within the Table Mountain National Park Marine Protected Area, and it therefore makes perfect sense to aim to protect the animals living in them while maintaining public safety. Dr Maya Pfaff, another speaker at the information session, even suggested that some of the animals that may now thrive in the pools may actually help to keep the water clean. Mussels and feather duster worms filter the water and improve the clarity, algae take up nutrients, and limpets clean algae off the rocks.
Particularly over the festive season, the beaches and tidal pools around Cape Town are extremely busy. This is a wonderful opportunity for thousands of beach-goers to experience both safe swimming and a little bit more of what the ocean has to offer, instead of a sterile, salt-water pool devoid of healthy marine life. Bringing a snorkel and mask with you when next you go swimming will be well rewarded. To see some pictures of the amazing animals – from nudibranchs to a cuttlefish with eggs – in the St James tidal pool, check out Lisa’s instagram profile.
Do you swim regularly in any of the five pools in which the new cleaning regimen is being tested? What do you think about it? If you think that environmentally gentle cleaning of tidal pools is a good idea, what about letting the city know that you appreciate having tidal pools that are both safe and biodiverse. A short message on the City of Cape Town facebook page to say thank you and keep up the good work (and a request to extend it to the other tidal pools) is a good place to start!
You can read a news article about the new cleaning protocol here.
Life’s a Beach: Your Round-The-Coast Guide To South African Beaches – Ann Gadd
Compliments of the season. If you’re contemplating which beach to head to for tomorrow’s traditional Boxing Day beach outing, a venerable South African institution, I have just the book for you. The product of a mammoth investment of time (which couldn’t have been all bad) and distance travelled, Life’s a Beach is a handy guide to (possibly, probably, almost) every single beach along South Africa’s coastline.
Life’s a Beach
Each pair of facing pages covers a stretch of coast, and beaches are rated for surfing, alongside information about swimming, kiteboarding, wake boarding, kayaking and canoeing, diving, fishing and hiking. The scuba diving information for the sites around the Cape Peninsula, with which I am familiar, is reasonable, but of necessity very abbreviated owing to the book’s format and primary focus. It goes without saying that you should seek out some local knowledge before diving in an area you haven’t visited before.
Unique experiences and best kept secrets (no longer – haha!) are highlighted, as well as the presence of braai and picnic facilities. Tips on where to go for sundowners are also included. Child friendly activities are mentioned where applicable, too.
Access tips, as well as warnings about rips, pollution, sharks (thank you Shark Spotters!) and whether a beach has Blue Flag status round off the comprehensive information that is provided in a handily concise manner. This book will be extremely useful when you’re visiting an unfamiliar stretch of South Africa’s coastline, and particularly invaluable when it’s a little known and less popular beach.
Get a copy of the book here, or here if you’re outside South Africa.
The forecasts are conflicted as to whether the weekend’s wind will be manageable or hectic. Saturday looks like the better option and it is too early to rule out the Atlantic. Currently it is green off Long Beach in Noordhoek and the CSIR buoy shows the temperature climbing – not good prospects – but if the south easter picks up it will change.
Heron in the Simon’s Town yacht basin
My plan is to launch early on Saturday as I have a Junior Open Water diver who needs to get a handle on backward rolls before vacation time. I will most likely hide in the yacht basin for that. Thereafter we can go anywhere we choose… If the weather permits. So, if you are on the list you will get an update from me at around 7.30am on Saturday, and if its a go, we will leave from the Jetty at 10.00am. Want to get on the list? Let me know!
