Visibility – Page 23 – Learn to Dive Today Blog

To dive, or not to dive?

Becoming a qualified scuba diver is for some people a dream, a huge achievement, for some just another minor achievement and for others a piece of cake. Irrespective of your comfort level when trying something new, the level of enjoyment is largely dependent on the rate of progress you make and the diligence of the trainer.

I tried skydiving once and had my first jump cancelled several times, not by the instructor, but by the pilot who refused to take-off in poor conditions. I tried microlights too and had the same problem. Diving is no different. The Instructor or Divemaster should cancel the day’s diving if the conditions are less than optimal.

Unpleasant surface conditions at the Clan Stuart

It is true to say that once below the surface the conditions above don’t always have too much bearing on the dive. Choppy surface conditions can soon be forgotten once at depth. For a seasoned diver the surface conditions are seldom a big issue but new divers and for students slowly coming to terms with a host of new skills, equipment, and the recent dive briefing are very susceptible to panic on the surface.

A stressed diver on the surface, being battered by choppy seas is often encouraged to descend: “Descend quickly and then you will feel better.” This is far from the truth. Descending a near-panicked diver or even a highly stressed diver is the wrong choice. Put them back on the boat or take them back to shore.

The same is true for poor visibility, which can often increase stress and lead to panic. Diving in bad visibility is a skill that will be learned at a more advanced level – an Open Water diver should not have to contend with pea-soup on their first sea dives.

Chocolate-coloured visibility in False Bay

A new diver has many new things to think about and to ensure they get the pleasure from diving they should it is important to move at a pace that maintains their sense of achievement and that they are ready for the next step before you proceed. All too often time and money influence the decisions to dive or cancel, and new divers end up going into the ocean when they honestly should not, and if they were given a choice they would not dive. A Divemaster or Instructor insisting that “the water will be fine when we are in” is doing the dive industry a disservice as most new divers never dive again if their qualifying dives were a nightmare.

False Bay colour swatches

This set of photos is cropped from pictures I’ve taken in False Bay since late 2009. Each picture was taken with the camera roughly horizontal, at about five metres’ depth. The idea is to track the seasonality of the colour of the water here – green to blue and back. In theory, anyway!

Click on the image to go to the set of photos on flickr. If you hover the mouse cursor over each square you’ll see the date it was taken on; if you want to know where in False Bay, click on the photo to see the description.

This is an ongoing project.

Sodwana 2011 trip report

We have recently returned from another successful dive trip to Sodwana Bay. For those that have not been there, it is a sheltered bay just south of the Mozambique border and is home to one of the top dive sites in the world. The coastline consists of approx. 12-15 kilometres of pristine reef with much of it at a depth of between 12 and 20 metres. There are deeper sites there too but for the vast majority of recreational divers, Two Mile, Five Mile and Nine Mile reef are diving destinations unparalleled in South Africa.

Swimming pool and dining area (on the right) at Coral Divers

Sodwana Bay has a selection of 10-15 dive operators and they all have something special to offer. We chose Coral Divers on both the trips we have done for a host of reasons. The camp runs perfectly, the food is excellent, the dive planning and beach control is exceptional and they are very accommodating when it comes to divers chopping and changing sites and dives. The boats are in good condition and we had not a single reason to complain about anything. They transport you to and from the beach by means of a covered trailer with benches towed slowly by a tractor, they have gear crates, showers and baths for gear rinsing and adequate place to hang your gear to dry. Their camp is the closest to the beach of all the dive operators which makes things very quick and easy when you head out for your day’s dives.

The tractor (left) and gear rinsing and drying area

They run a tight ship and everything runs on schedule. There seems to be adequate staff to ensure all this happens. The skipper we had (JERRY!) and the Divemaster (Darryl) allocated to our boat were superb, experienced and flexible. The group was a mixture of qualified divers and Open Water students and they ensured we dived safe sites that were suitable for all levels. You may find better service elsewhere in Sodwana but Coral Divers have ensured that both our trips were exceptional events so I can’t imagine trying someone else.

Naughty monkeys outside one of the cabins

Accommodation options range from safari tents erected on wooden decking with corrugated roofing overhead (on special at the moment for R50 per person per night) to wooden cabins with no bathroom (you use the communal ablutions, which are spotless), a bathroom attached to the cabin but that must be accessed from outside, or a full en suite arrangement. Bedding and mosquito nets are provided in the cabins and everything is in good repair.

There is a large kitchen with self-catering facilities and tons of secure fridge space, or you can order from the restaurant. The food is hearty and there’s something to please everyone. A buffet is also available at breakfast and dinner. If you want a cheap holiday you can do it very comfortably here, but it’s also possible to have a fully luxurious stay where all your requirements are met.

The shady dive camp is home to large troupes of monkeys, mongooses, some cats and their kittens, squirrels, and even some small deer. Further away from the main building are camping and caravan sites. We’ve gone out of season both times we’ve visited because we prefer not to have to queue to get to the beach! It can get very busy over public holidays and at peak times.

As far as the dives went, Clare will write some posts about them. Suffice it to say that while it was slightly surgy, the visibility ranged from 10 to 25 metres, water temperatures were never lower than 23 degrees, and we saw fish, coral, turtles, rays, dolphins, and tropical marine life in abundance!

Newsletter: Wreck diving

Hey there

The wind just won’t settle so diving is still a little unpredictable. We did however have really good diving last weekend and again yesterday. We dived one the Smitswinkel Bay wrecks, the MV Rockeater on Monday and had around 10m visibility with coolish 11 degree water. It is amazing to see how a once majestic ocean-going vessel rusts away whilst creating an incredible amount of protection for a host of ocean creatures. A torch or video light reveals the mass of colour that adorns everything in the ocean despite the depth.

The next launch took us to Wonder Reef in the Castor Rock reef complex, and the visibility was not quite as good as it was a shallower dive but still acceptable. Cecil and Gerard recovered an anchor (the second one for Cecil) with a lot of chain and surfaced it with the help of an SMB. It is always good to have an SMB – primarily for the boat to find you – but it is a valuable piece of equipment for treasure recovery… Who needs a lift bag?

We also dived on Wednesday, when Kate and I dived with Andrew to do a search and recovery dive for his Advanced course and used a lift bag to move a crate full of rocks around at Long Beach.

This weekend all the dive charters are staying indoors as the southeaster hits tomorrow and blows until Sunday evening. We will be in the pool on Saturday so the wind will not affect us but Sunday seems like a stay home day…

Courses

We are busy with Open Water, Advanced, Deep Specialty, Rescue and Divemaster at the moment but these are almost done. With the visibility improving as we go into the winter months I want to run Digital Underwater Photography and Night diving Specialties. Night diving has a special appeal for me as there is so much to see at night that just hides all day long.

Remember I dive all week long so when the office gets you down take as day off and come diving. I call it aquatic therapy.

best regards

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog

Diving is addictive!

Newsletter: Back from Sodwana

Hello divers and others

We are back from Sodwana. When we arrived the folks that had dived the day before said the conditions were not that great… “The water is only 26 degrees and the visibility was only about 15-20 metres.” Well… being tough and from Cape Town we just had to endure the hardship and had 8 amazing dives. It was partly cloudy most days so nobody came back toasted like we did on the last trip. To the 12 people that joined me, BIG THANK YOU. It was good!!! Clare has put together a disc of photos for everyone and we will make a plan to get them to you.

Below are a few photos from some of the dives.

I have a fair amount of diving to do in the coming weeks as we were able to sign up 28 people for a Discover Scuba experience. Kate is also back from the UK and needs to do forty dives before June when she will attend an Instructor course.

Descending at Pinnacles with Adam, Ollie and Goot

We also have an Advanced course running and this coming weekend I will start a Nitrox/Deep speciality combo, six deeper dives to some of Cape Town’s stunning wrecks, on Nitrox (enriched air) After the deep dives we will continue the Open Water student training.

The winter months bring cold but very clean water into False Bay, with northerly winds we have exceptional visibility and this winter we will focus on running the Deep, Wreck and Night specialties every month. The wrecks in Smitswinkel Bay are almost all in 35 metres of water and these wrecks are a sight for sore eyes when the water is clean. Night diving has so much to offer as the ambient light, moonlight and bright torches turn the ocean into a pool of light filled with some amazing creatures.

I have also bought more gear and have a few warmer wetsuits for the cooler months coming to a ocean near you.

I would like to make either a Saturday or a Sunday morning boat dive every weekend, weather permitting, so give me some idea of what days are best for whom so we can try and schedule something.

We have also added a few videos to youtube, quite a few new posts to the blog and the website has had a facelift. The blog is an amazing source of information for anything ocean and diving related with many book reviews and a host of other information on sea life. There are hundreds of photos and many of you appear in them! Take a look sometime.

I also have many of your dive cards and will try and drop them off but if you are in the southern suburbs at some point call me and we can meet somewhere. Sending them by post is often a problem as they are mistaken for credit cards and they often just vanish.

best regards

Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog

Diving is addictive!

Dive sites: Castor Rock

Tony had three students who needed to finish their course, so we took them to Castor Rock. This is a large granite reef, a short distance from Long Beach in Simon’s Town where we were fetched by the boat. It’s just on the other side of the spectacular Roman Rock lighthouse.

Like Partridge Point, the Castor Rock area is a large maze of scattered boulders and pinnacles. Different marine life can be seen depending on the depth. This makes for an interesting dive from start to finish, because you can do your safety stop next to a shallow portion of the reef.

Sea cucumbers, urchins, anemones, sea squirts and feather stars

There are the usual sea cucumbers, urchins, feather stars and sea stars, but this site seems to be a particular haven for handsome striped pyjama sharks and catsharks. We saw six or eight pyjama sharks, some sleeping in crevices and others swimming around. A night light sea jelly greeted us as we started the dive, and bright orange sea fans are abundant.

The place is also nudibranch paradise – I found silvertip nudibranchs the size of hotdogs, and there were also gas flame nudibranchs in abundance.

Silvertip and gas flame nudibranchs at Castor Rock

The visibility was good, but the water in False Bay is still very green. We’re looking forward to winter diving!

Dive date: 2 April 2011

Air temperature: 24 degrees

Water temperature: 14 degrees

Maximum depth: 21.1 metres

Visibility: 10 metres

Dive duration: 30 minutes

Newsletter: Seasons of the sea

Hi divers

We have had some amazing diving days of late. Friday saw conditions at Long Beach that we have been longing for for months. Warm, clean water with an abundance of life. The ocean’s seasons are very interesting aspects of diving for Clare and I, and thanks to Clare’s logbook and amazing photos we have a much better idea now than we had a year ago of what you can find and when.

We have been fortunate enough to see tiny octopus, warty pleurobranchs spawning egg ribbons, klipfish mating, huge rays feeding and shysharks having a feeding frenzy. We visited the cowsharks, watched sadly as injured and hooked sharks struggled to adapt to the harm inflicted upon them by man, and watched a juvenile jutjaw and a doublesash butterflyfish grow from 2 centimetres to close to 6 centimetres before they moved off from their tiny safe house to brave the ocean.

On the weekend Clare found a juvenile sole so small and so well camouflaged it almost avoided her beady eyes. We always find something new and interesting in the ocean. We have watched our small artificial reef go from bits of wood and plastic to a small colony of life. The list is endless.

Diving at this time of year is not to be missed. (That applies all year round!)

Recent dives

We dived the Atlantic early Sunday, Grant taking us to the yacht wreck on Klein Tafelberg reef. We were looking for depth to continue the Deep Specialty and our maximum depth was 37 metres in 10 degree water with amazing visibility, 15-20 metres. We had to perform a simulated emergency deco stop for 8 minutes and during this time we had seals nipping at Cecil and I, and a jellyfish bonanza. We had a dive time of 36 minutes and we dived on Nitrox.

From Hout Bay we dashed to Long Beach to dive with the two Divemaster candidates and continue the Advanced Course doing navigation. Back in the water once more for a Refresher, and home to download the photos. The ocean was warm at Long Beach, 17 degrees, calm and the visibility was 5-6 metres.

Part of the yacht wreck on Tafelberg Reef

Atlantic diving should start to fade soon as the seasons change and the prevailing winds come from the north west. This cleans and cools to False Bay area and the visibility gets better and better.

Trips

We are off to Sodwana on Saturday for a four night/six dive trip, and the group, 13 in total, are all looking forward to this. We will post photos and video when we get back. I think we have five or six cameras for this event so there are bound to be loads of good photos.

Planned dives

We are hoping to book two launches for the Friday after we return from Sodwana, that being Easter Friday and booking is essential. We will plan to go to a wreck for the first dive and possibly a barge wreck or reef for the second launch. I need to give Grant some numbers before I leave for Sodwana so please let me know as soon as possible.

Courses

I am starting a new Deep Specialty course as soon as we get back from travelling. It’s a good idea to do the enriched air/Nitrox specialty at the same time. This combination qualifies you to dive to 40 metres, and gives you longer bottom times and safer diving.

Regards

—
Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog

Diving is addictive!

Newsletter: Summer’s last fling

Hi divers

Recent Dives

As part of the Deep Specialty course currently on the go, we visited the SAS Fleur on Saturday morning. The Fleur lies in 42 metres of water (on the sand), and is quite far out in the middle of False Bay. Her sister ship, the SAS Somerset, is that curved grey navy vessel parked behind the Two Oceans Aquarium at the Waterfront. The Fleur is a spectacular wreck and we were fortunate to have perfect conditions both above and below the surface, with calm seas and 10-12 metres of visibility on the wreck (though it was dark).

Some photos taken on the SAS Fleur in False Bay, in 35-40 metres of water:

Sea urchin and sea cucumber on the Fleur

On Saturday afternoon we took a group of Open Water students on the boat to Castor Rock to finish their course. Castor Rock is a rocky reef system behind Roman Rock lighthouse, which stands near the entrance to Simon’s Town harbour. It was a short boat ride from Long Beach but very scenic.

Marinus and Dean showing off their perfect buoyancy

On Sunday we visited the sevengill cowsharks at Shark Alley near Pyramid Rock. This is a physically demanding dive to do as a shore entry, involving a steep climb up and down the side of the shore and a tricky entry over the rocks. The rewards, however, are great. Even though the visibility was only about three metres, we had a super dive and were visited by lots of sharks. It was sad to see that several of the sharks have been injured by boat propellers and fishing hooks.

Sevengill cowshark emerging from the kelp

Sevengill cowshark with divers in the background

Weekend plans

The southeaster will continue to howl for one more day this week. Friday and Saturday should be less windy and we will dive at Long Beach both days doing Rescue and Divemaster training. We will be continuing the Deep Specialty course with a dive from Hout Bay on Sunday morning. Sunday late morning and afternoon will be spent in the pool, doing a Refresher and some Open Water students’ confined water skills.

There is a chance we could do a dive to the Aster, a wreck in Hout Bay Sunday afternoon, if there are enough people. Text me if you want in. It’s for Advanced divers, or you could do it as a deep Adventure dive, because it lies at about 28 metres with an average depth of over 20 metres.

Sodwana is getting close. For those coming along the water is warm, 26 degrees today, sunny and 28 degrees on the beach… For those not coming along the water is warm, 26 degrees today, sunny and 28 degrees on the beach… Hehehe!

Courses

There is a group of Open Water students starting on Monday whom I hope to finish diving during the course of next week.

I am also going to run an Advanced course special starting in the next week or two. It will consist of four boat dives and a shore dive and will focus on the skills and knowledge required to enjoy Cape diving and many of the wrecks we have here. We will focus on deep diving safety and this opens up a whole lot of dive sites in Cape Town. Mail me for more info.

Miscellaneous

Please remember your MPA permits. If you’re coming to Sodwana you will most certainly have yours checked, so make sure it’s in date. Also they’re required for all the diving we do in Cape Town, so please make sure you bring yours with you whenever we dive.

Just a reminder, if you don’t want to be on the mailing list please let me know. Also, feel free to forward this to any of your friends who might be interested in diving with us.

Regards
—
Tony Lindeque
076 817 1099
www.learntodivetoday.co.za
www.learntodivetoday.co.za/blog

Diving is addictive!

Bookshelf: Into The Abyss

Into The Abyss: Diving To Adventure In The Liquid World – Rod Macdonald

I think Rod Macdonald might be quite famous in his part of the world – he’s the author of several diving guidebooks on Scapa Flow and on wreck diving in England and Scotland. I hadn’t heard of him before I read this book, but I think he’s well-known in British diving circles.

This book is more or less his life story as a diver, starting with his introduction to scuba diving in the early 1980s. The water off the United Kingdom is cold – in parts, even colder than the Atlantic Ocean off South Africa’s west coast. He mentions a dive that they’d do every year in a Scottish quarry on 31 December, Hogmanay, and says that the water was so cold (2 degrees celcius or less) that his regulator would spit pellets of ice into his mouth as he inhaled. When Macdonald started diving, the low pressure inflator hose on BCDs hadn’t been invented yet, so the practice was to descend and then orally inflate your BCD at the bottom. Fun times!

Macdonald soon became interested in wreck diving, and given that the North Sea and surrounds saw so much naval action during both wars, there are many, many wrecks to explore. Navigation during the early parts of the 20th century wasn’t as sophisticated as it is now, so skippers relied on dead reckoning and the locations of many of the ships on the hydrographic charts of the region are incorrect. Macdonald and his friends would search for wrecks using the charts as a guide, and then mark them precisely. Many of the wrecks they dived on were “virgin wrecks” – they were the first divers to make contact with the wreck since its sinking.

Deep diving on air took its toll, and after several scary nitrogen narcosis incidents, Macdonald switched to trimix for his deep diving (shortly after it was introduced – he was among the first divers qualified by BSAC in this new skill). This enabled him to dive deeper, and more safely.

Quite early in his career Macdonald acquired a dive boat, and used this for exploring. His anecdotes about boating and skippering a dive boat are entertaining and fascinating – the insight he has into the ocean from being a skipper as well as a diver is profound.

There are chapters on diving in Truuk Lagoon (MUST GO THERE) and Palau, and the book starts and ends with an account of his incredibly dangerous dive in the Corryvreckan Whirlpool off the coast of Scotland. This is a terrifying natural feature in a deep (70 to 200 metres) narrow channel through which there’s an intense tidal current, directed into standing waves and whirlpools by the narrow pinnacle in the middle of the gulf which rises to within 30 metres of the surface. Macdonald recounts how the downward current at the change of the tide was so strong that he watched the bubbles from his regulator become stationary above him, and then start descending. Scary!

This book was completely different to Deep Descent – I didn’t get the same sense of competitive machismo from Macdonald and his fellow divers as I did from reading about the divers who visit the Andrea Doria. They seem to enjoy the thrill of discovery and investigation, searching for uncharted and lost wrecks. But their diving practices are at the same time very conservative, and on several occasions dives were called off because of the sea conditions (which, off Mud Island, can be dire) or because a diver felt unwell or narced early on in the dive. I approve.

Get the book here if you’re in South Africa, otherwise click here.

Sea life: Strepies

I haven’t often seen great schools of fish at Long Beach – maybe ten times on the sixty or so dives I’ve done there in the past 18 months. Seeing one is a wonderful experience, especially if the water is clean.

Kate and I did a dive at Long Beach with Jeremy, a Canadian tourist, in early November last year. The visibilty was magnificent, it was a sunny day and we stayed shallow. While we were quite close inshore we encountered a large school of strepies, who circled around us for some time. It was magical – the sunlight, their shiny bodies, and the good visibility combined to make this one of the best dives I’ve done at Long Beach.

“Strepie” means “little stripe” in Afrikaans, and refers to the horizontal yellow stripes that run along the body of this fish. They are also known as karanteen, and are plentiful on both coasts of South Africa. They’re popular with anglers (particularly as bait to catch other fish) and appear on the green list of good fish choices according to SASSI.

Strepies are mostly herbivorous and like inshore rocky areas with lots of marine vegetation – they are often seen at A Frame.