When the salvors failed to remove the Eihatsu Maru from Clifton 1st Beach in the couple of days after she ran aground, Tony and I took one of our occasional night drives (usually done when one of us has cabin fever and the other one can remember an ice cream shop that is still open at 9pm) to Clifton to see what the vessel looked like at night.
Crow’s nest
The stern of the vessel
Amidships
The sight of the ship on the beach was dramatic, and despite the darkness Tony managed to get some fairly decent photos of the deck and superstructure of the ship with his long lens.
The John Ross/Z Tug at night
The ship was successfully removed from the beach on Friday 18 May, three days after these pictures were taken.
The Edge of the Sea completes the trilogy begun by Under the Sea-Wind and The Sea Around Us. Its focus is on the coastline, the meeting point between land and ocean where one is most conscious of the passage of time and the cycles of nature. Rachel Carson was an American writer, and lived and worked on the east coast of the United States. The northern reaches of this coast are similar to the Cape Town coastline, in that there are kelp forests and much invertebrate life in the cool water. Its southern reaches in the Florida Keys, however, are characterised by coral reefs and mangrove forests, more reminiscent of Sodwana Bay in KwaZulu Natal, on South Africa’s north western coast.
This is a more conventional piece of nature writing than Under the Sea-Wind, and its scope is far narrower than The Sea Around Us. It is fascinating, however, to delve into the secret lives of crabs, sand fleas, limpets, urchins, sea stars, clams and a large number of their neighbours. While – for the most part – we don’t find the exact same creatures on our side of the Atlantic, their adaptations to life in the intertidal zone are similar, and their behaviour and diet is too.
The section on the coral reefs and mangroves of Florida was interesting to me because that kind of coastline is relatively unfamiliar – I’ve only visited coral reefs three times (Zanzibar, Sodwana twice) and don’t know nearly as much about how those ecosystems work. It was the first time someone articulated for me a point that – in retrospect – is probably completely obvious to everyone else on earth, but for me was a lightbulb moment. Coral reefs only occur on east-facing coasts (think about the location of the Florida Keys, the Great Barrier reef in Australia, the east African coral reefs), as the western coasts of continents are typically subject to upwelling driven by wind and the direction of the earth’s rotation.
Rather than being an active participant in the life of the shore, man is portrayed here as an observer, unable to influence the tidal and seasonal rhythms that drive all behaviour here. The book is illustrated with beautiful line drawings and one or two maps, and I’d recommend it highly. There’s a comprehensive glossary with full species names at the back.
You can buy the book here, or for Kindle get it here.
Shoreline: Discovering South Africa’s Coast by Jeannie Hayward, Jaco Loubser, Claudio Velásquez Rojas
Sometimes I do things in the wrong order, and reading this book (I think) is an example of that. It’s the companion volume to locally-produced series Shoreline, of which I have only watched one episode while having a raucous conversation with my sister about whether her former junior school rival had aged well.
Like the television series, Shoreline the book is divided into chapters by location, traversing South Africa’s 2,800 kilometres of shoreline from the Orange river to Kosi Bay. Much of the text is taken directly from the television program, for which the script was written by the brilliantTomEaton. Magnificent photographs by Claudio Velásquez Rojas, who worked with Thomas Peschak on Currents of Contrast. The aerial photos in particular are incredible – much of South Africa’s coast is dramatically rocky with gorges, cliffs and free-standing formations such as Hole in the Wall at Coffee Bay, and seeing it from an unusual angle is very special.
The book is not solely focused on the marine and coastal wildlife and plants found along our shores, although many species are singled out. There is evidence of extremely early human settlement and family groups along the South African coastline, where the poly-unsaturated fatty acids available from marine species such as limpets would allow large-brained humanoid inhabitants of the sea caves along the southern Cape coast to thrive. There is thus a strong archaeological focus to the volume, and the marriage between natural history and anthropology, geology, oceanography, zoology, botany and archaeology is beautifully achieved. The communities that currently inhabit the shoreline and utilise its resources also feature, and I enjoyed learning of the fish kraals at Kosi Bay, the fish traps built by 19th century farmers along the Wild Coast, and the Thembe-Tonga people, who harvest red bait and other invertebrates from rock pools at full and new moon. The book also touches on subjects such as the KwaZulu Natal shark nets, Knysna seahorses, the diamond industry on the West Coast, and a number of other special interest subjects that apply to different sections of our coast.
As soon as I finished reading this book I made plans for a midweek break at De Kelders for me and Tony later this year (during whale season) and I have been plotting how we can explore some of the Wild Coast without going missing or getting stuck in the mud. The South African coast is compelling and varied, and it seems that one could travel it for a lifetime without getting bored. This beautiful book showcases the beauty, variety and history of our coast in spectacular fashion.
There are some representative photos here. A short review can be found here. I’d recommend it for locals as well as for tourists who want a coffee table volume to take home as a souvenir – this one has substance, as well as the requisite pretty pictures.
A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout – Carl Safina
A Sea in Flames
The memory of the Deepwater Horizonoil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is fairly fresh, as it’s been exactly two years since the rig exploded. Eleven men were killed, and unimaginable quantities of crude oil leaked out into the fertile fishing and tourist area where the rig was drilling. The rig was drilling in water 1.5 kilometres deep, and during the course of exploratory drilling, had made contact with deposits of natural gas and oil at a depth of over 6 kilometres under the sea floor. When a pressure test (basically to establish whether the well had been sealed properly) failed, oil and gas shot out of the well at incredible volumes and pressure. It took four months for BP (the rig’s owners) and Transocean (the rig’s operator) to stop the oil gushing out of the well.
Carl Safina has written three other books – Song for the Blue Ocean, Voyage of the Turtle, and Eye of the Albatross – establishing himself as a lyrical, sensitive author with a deep love for the creatures he writes about. This book is a radical departure from that writing style. It was penned swiftly, while the crisis was unfolding. Safina seethes with rage, drips sarcasm, and does not bother to hide his contempt for BP, the coastguard, and the US government’s handling of the spill. BP in particular receives frequent tongue lashings, displaying astonishing ineptitude, dishonesty and even contempt for the ecological and human tragedy that the spill unleashed. BP chief Tony Hayward eventually stepped aside, but not before embarrassing himself and enraging both the horrified public and the US government. BP’s report on the disaster can be found here, along with some very sanitised and bright (and digitally manipulated) images and videos. This clip from the US Coastguard shows the immensity of the fire that ignited when the rig exploded (it went out two days later, when the rig sank).
There are ample other sources which describe the oil spill and its effects, the timeline of the spill, and the efforts made to stop the flow of oil. I will mention, however, what particularly struck me in reading this book.
First, it’s abundantly clear that while oil drilling and prospecting technology has progressed at an incredible rate over the last 30 years, cleanup and recovery equipment has not changed at all since 1970. Driven by the diminishing availability of oil reserves that are actually easily accessible, drilling has moved into the deep ocean and is a task of immense complexity and technological sophistication. As Safina observes, oil companies receive great rewards for finding and extracting new oil deposits. The risks, however, are almost entirely borne by the public and the environment, both of which suffer far greater losses when a spill occurs than the oil companies do.
Massive volumes of toxic chemical dispersants were sprayed onto the slick and injected into the plumes of oil under the ocean surface – the effects of these is unknown and has not been studied. The remainder of the relief effort involved floating booms (totally ineffective in the presence of waves or wind chop) as physical barriers, and manual cleanups of beaches and marshes. Disaster management plans for the Gulf of Mexico – a tropical environment inhabited by whale sharks, dolphins, turtles and shrimp – made mention of walrus and other creatures found only in Alaska. A lot of copy and paste, and very little thought, went into these plans.
Safina draws heavily (perhaps too heavily – this is very disappointing) on news reports of the spill, including much speculation about its extent and likely effects by journalists and media spokespeople. He describes the frustration and depression experienced by the inhabitants of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and the other areas affected by the spill, and the crushing uncertainty of whether the oil would wash up or pollute a given area. Ultimately most of the estimates of the spill’s effects were shown to be overwrought and overly pessimistic. Oil eating bacteria that occur naturally in the Gulf of Mexico (which is subject to natural oil seepage at the rate of a few thousand barrels per day – it’s an oil rich area with cracks in the seafloor that constantly admit tiny quantities of oil into the ocean) were able to consume part of the oil. Some of it evaporated naturally. Some of it was dispersed into droplets so small as to be invisible to the naked eye when mixed with seawater. A tiny amount was collected from the gushing well by vessels on the surface.
Much oil, however, was washed up on beaches, deposited on the seafloor or in marshes, and remains suspended in the water of the Gulf of Mexico. Thousands of sea birds, and hundreds of turtles and dolphins were oiled. Long-lived, slow growing creatures such as turtles, dolphins, and tuna will only show the effects that the spill has had on their populations in a decade or more’s time. Concerns that entire planktonic life cycle stages of creatures such as bluefin tuna were wiped out by the dispersant chemicals and low oxygen concentrations (caused by the growth of oil eating bacteria) will only be tested in years to come when the absence or diminution of a generation of tuna can be measured. Fish stocks in the gulf rebounded during the months in which the fishing grounds were closed, but fishermen are now reporting diminished catches, sickly and dying crabs, and stillborn dolphin calves as a matter of course. The oyster farming industry in the area has been all but wiped out. Consumer confidence in seafood from the affected area plummeted amid fears that fish and shellfish would be toxic or contaminated by oil and dispersant chemicals. Confidence has not recovered, and nor has tourism to the region.
While it seems that the worst case scenarios touted by the press during the spill were exaggerated (this opinion piece is an excellent analysis of the uncomfortable collision between scientists and the media), estimates of the spill’s extent proved to be very accurate. BP’s estimates of the rate of flow from the well were outright lies from the beginning, but mathematical models based on current, wind, and the area of ocean fouled by the oil over a given time period provided flow estimates that were later demonstrated to be spot on.
Safina’s primary conclusion is that we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, starting immediately. Instead of pouring huge amounts of money into researching technology to reach ever more remote oil deposits, we should be channeling funds into clean alternative energy sources. He points out how we have lost any sense of the difference between price, cost and value (he writes a bit about the distinction here). We fail to recognise the value of the service provided by the world’s forests and oceans in absorbing carbon dioxide, for example, because they do not cost us anything in order to benefit from them. Thinking about the earth’s resources in these terms will enable us to be less cavalier about squandering the benefits they supply.
Safina also executes something of an about turn in his opinion of the US Coastguard’s handling of the spill. At various points as the disaster unfolded, it appeared that the coastguard was firmly in the pocket of BP, and was deferring to the criminal party in the management of the crime scene. A meeting with retired Admiral Thad Allen leads Safina to a more nuanced understanding of the events he witnessed, and his opinion of Allen’s handling of the catastrophe is much improved.
This book was written quickly, in the heat of emotion, and it’s very obvious. Even the title is somewhat overwrought, and I’m dubious about the merit of writing the entire book under a misconception that was only corrected at the eleventh hour by meeting with Admiral Allen. While Safina’s book provides an on the ground picture of what it was like to live among the communities that experienced the full effects of the spill, it isn’t easy to follow the chronology of the spill. He doesn’t go into much detail about what BP tried in order to stem the flow of oil (that information was, in any case, withheld from the public for the most part) and is not really concerned with a linear history of the spill. There is room for a reasoned, more clinical account of the spill and its effects, especially after enough time has passed to fully understand what those effects might be.
Some more opinions on the book can be found here and here. This article is a good read concerning the extent of the recovery in the region of the spill. Finally, this article describes the dramatically reduced catches of seafood in the Gulf region, and the horrible mutations and lesions that are being found in many of the species there.
Tony and a potato bass (checking out his camera) at Texas
The trip to Mozambique seemed to arrive very quickly and ended just as fast. Somehow a week goes by a lot faster when on vacation. We had really good weather and some really good dives – no in fact every one of the nine dives we did was spectacular. We had fun with huge, friendly potato bass and for me the huge schools of fish and bait balls, rays, as well as a leopard shark that buzzed us at Doodles were the highlight. There are some photos on facebook here and here, and watch the blog for more.
Leopard shark and entourage at Doodles
Back home
The weather is not going to play along with divers this weekend and a cold front as well as a 5 metre swell with a fair amount of rain arrives tomorrow. The rain I can deal with but the swell will make diving very surgy and reduce the visibility. The water was not looking good this morning and had a greenish hue. I decided not to dive and that’s going to be the plan for at least the next few days.
Raggy scorpion fish – look closely – at Three Sisters
Cape Town Dive Festival
The bookings are starting to roll in (the Saturday dive to the SAS Fleur is already full, for example) so if you have not yet booked please visit www.ctdf.co.za and pick your dives and book. We are on the following dives, if you want to join us:
Early booking is a really good plan as if you book and pay by 31 May you can win an Apeks regulator set worth R7,000!
Clifton
The Eihatsu Maru at Clifton 1st Beach, taken on Sunday 13 May
If you have not seen a 50 metre long fishing trawler up close before, pop down to Clifton and take a look at the one on the beach. There are some photos of it here and here. If all goes well, it will be gone by Saturday, if not it will be there for a while. Re-floating a ship that size is a far bigger task than most would imagine (witness the Seli 1, which is actually in a position far more conducive to being recovered, but was in much worse shape when she ran aground). There is also a risk of it tearing a hole in the hull as they drag it off the beach and this could mean a new wreck to dive.
We love a good shipwreck. Witness our obsession with the Seli 1, which ran aground at Blouberg a couple of years ago. It is thus with interest that we discovered that a Japanese-built, Chinese-run fishing trawler, the Eihatsu Maru, ran aground on Clifton 1st Beach on Saturday morning, as we were preparing to head home from Mozambique. We went down to Clifton on Sunday afternoon to check out the ship. Here’s a video showing the vessel, and the small tug on standby just offshore.
The ship apparently ran aground in thick fog, and it seems pretty miraculous that she missed all the boulders off the Clifton Beaches. Very miraculous indeed. Her hull was not damaged but she had nearly 100 tons of fuel on board which would cause some serious misery on this beautiful stretch of expensive real estate and pristine coastline should any of it leak out.
The vast majority of new divers in Cape Town know where Long Beach in Simon’s Town is. Irrespective of the dive school you choose for Open Water training it is in most cases quite likely you will do at least one dive at Long Beach. There is a very good reason for this: it is diveable in most conditions as is usually the last place on the coastline to be blown out. It is a safe environment and a perfect place for training as it is by far one of the easiest shore entries around.
Divers enter the water as a rubberduck speeds past
Although it is known to all dive trainers as a training site, very few visitors know this and not all water users (boaters, kayakers and paddle-skiers) are aware of your presence in the water. The average boater does not know the tell-tale signs of bubbles divers make, and why should he? But being struck by a paddle-ski, a propeller, or the keel of a sailboat is going to hurt you and it could easily kill you.
It is not too often that boats buzz by the beach, but on occasion the Navy boats as well as paddlers, and fishermen drive by as well as visitors to the coast with their recreational boats. Even the NSRI uses this beach for training of their boat crews on occasion. Part of a skipper’s training is to be aware of things floating on the surface: buoys could indicate nets, for example, that would snag the propeller, and thus boaters are trained to avoid or approach carefully any such flotation device.
There is no evidence of a surface marker buoy
So why do most divers dive without any form of warning to a boat that they are there, and why would they do so when part of what they are teaching new divers involves ascending in random spots all over the area? “We seldom ascend during a dive” is most often the answer as to why yet there are several surface skills, training ascents and the constant risk of an unplanned ascent by a new diver coming to terms with buoyancy (or in some cases having a mild panic attack and dashing to the surface).
The simple answer is that it is not required by law in South Africa to tow a buoy or alpha flag… But then it’s not law that as an Open Water diver you can’t go to 50 metres during a dive. You are taught not to exceed your training level, your logic will also most likely tell you it’s a risky plan, but if you are foolish enough to try who would stop you?
More divers entering the water without a buoy or flag
It is fortunate that the dive industry is largely self-regulated and as divers we are free to explore the ocean at will. Scuba diving is a very safe sport and provided you stay within the guidelines of you training agency you will have thousands of safe and enjoyable dives. When doing a boat dive, the skipper will typically erect an Alpha flag to indicate to other boats that he has divers in the water (if your skipper doesn’t do this, it’s time to switch dive charters to one that’s more safety conscious).
You could dive without a pressure gauge – but that would be foolish – you could dive without a mask, but then you would see very little, and you could also dive without an alpha flag, but none of the surface water users would see you or know you were there. Would that not be foolish?
When on the sandy shore I sit,
Beside the salt sea-wave,
And fall into a weeping fit
Because I dare not shave –
A little whisper at my ear
Enquires the reason of my fear.
I answer “If that ruffian Jones
Should recognise me here,
He’d bellow out my name in tones
Offensive to the ear:
He chaffs me so on being stout
(A thing that always puts me out).”
Ah me! I see him on the cliff!
Farewell, farewell to hope,
If he should look this way, and if
He’s got his telescope!
To whatsoever place I flee,
My odious rival follows me!
For every night, and everywhere,
I meet him out at dinner;
And when I’ve found some charming fair,
And vowed to die or win her,
The wretch (he’s thin and I am stout)
Is sure to come and cut me out!
The girls (just like them!) all agree
To praise J. Jones, Esquire:
I ask them what on earth they see
About him to admire?
They cry “He is so sleek and slim,
It’s quite a treat to look at him!”
They vanish in tobacco smoke,
Those visionary maids –
I feel a sharp and sudden poke
Between the shoulder-blades –
“Why, Brown, my boy! Your growing stout!”
(I told you he would find me out!)
“My growth is not YOUR business, Sir!”
“No more it is, my boy!
But if it’s YOURS, as I infer,
Why, Brown, I give you joy!
A man, whose business prospers so,
Is just the sort of man to know!
“It’s hardly safe, though, talking here –
I’d best get out of reach:
For such a weight as yours, I fear,
Must shortly sink the beach!” –
Insult me thus because I’m stout!
I vow I’ll go and call him out!
