Ships – Page 5 – Learn to Dive Today Blog

Seli WHAT?

After our team of relay swimmers completed the Lighthouse Swim, Tony and I made our way back towards Granger Bay via a meandering route that included a search for the buoy marking the Seli 1, off Blouberg beach. We did not find it.

What we did find was quite disturbing: a hissing, pulsating patch of water beneath which the rusty wreckage of the Seli 1 lies, very close to the surface. There was no wind and very little swell when we were searching for the wreck, and initially we thought it was a school of baitfish disturbing the surface in that way. Fortunately we approached the spot slowly, because if we’d ridden over the wreckage this would be a different kind of blog post altogether.

We rode around the spot as close as we dared, watching the image of the objects below us on the sonar. The buckled plates of the wreck, where the SA Navy divers did their work with explosives to reduce it below the waterline in 2013, were clearly visible. The wreckage – particularly the shallowest part pictured above – is a definite hazard to any boat with a keel. We couldn’t tell exactly how much clearance there is between the top of the shallowest part of the wreck and the surface, but it didn’t seem to be more than half a metre. I hope it’s more than that, and I also hope that SAMSA pays attention to our request for a replacement marker buoy on the wreckage to warn ships (but considering how many channels of communication I had to try before not getting some kind of error, I haven’t a lot of hope).

If you’re interested in visible shipwrecks, check out my ebook Cape Town’s Visible Shipwrecks: A Guide for Explorers!

Bookshelf: Dynasties of the Sea

Dynasties of the Sea – Lori Ann LaRocco

Global shipping magnates tend to have a few things in common. One is that a strong familial tradition exists, with sons and grandsons taking over the business from their fathers and grandfathers. Further, as described by Rose George in Deep Sea and Foreign Going, her book on the shipping industry, the major shipping companies have turnover comparable to that of Microsoft, but are somehow almost unknown and unrecognised commercial enterprises. The combination of great dynastic wealth and understated power seems to characterise many of the key players in the global shipping industry.

Dynasties of the Sea is a series of interviews with shipping titans and shipping financiers. The list of interviewees is largely male with the exception of Kristin Holth, head of shipping at DNB Bank. This gender bias is likely at least partly due to the tendency of family dynasties to pass control of the business from firstborn son to firstborn son.

It’s not easy to make an interview format work in book form; the best efforts I have seen are Jack Schwager’s Market Wizards series about stock market traders and investment managers. One of the challenges is to record a conversation that will have relevance for some time after the interview. Shipping markets are highly cyclical – violently so – and unfortunately many of the remarks recorded in Dynasties of the Sea are specific to the time and market conditions when the interviews were conducted. Another challenge is to write up an interview as prose, and make it sound varied and interesting (“he said… he replied… he answered… he chortled… he snorted…”). This book fails that test.

If anything, the book works best as a superficial meditation on power. Everyone profiled in the book is able to command massive assets with a wave of a hand, and some interesting psychological insights can be gleaned from how they perceive themselves and the origins of their success. It could also be read as an object lesson on how everyone thinks they are a contrarian, “buying when others are selling” and vice versa. Really?

I am busy reading Maritime Economics by Martin Stopford, which is fabulous but long, and a far more comprehensive and theoretically complete introduction to the shipping world. At 819 pages, however, it may be too big a mouthful for some, in which case this book might be a candidate for a short, easy to follow introduction to some of the issues of global shipping.

You can get a copy of the book here or here.

Article: Wired on mapping a sunken aircraft carrier

Wired.com reported on efforts by NOAA to survey and map the USS Independence, a sunken aircraft carrier lying in over 800 metres of water near the Farallon Islands. She was scuttled in 1951 about 50 kilometres off the Californian coast. Wanting to test an underwater autonomous vehicle called the Echo Ranger, the scientists deployed the five ton unmanned mini-submarine from a 25 metre catamaran, and flew her 50 metres above the wreck to take sonar readings.

This kind of technology is fantastic, and will enable the US government to get a better idea of the state all the junk that has been dumped in the region of the Farallons during the 20th century. I imagine a similar survey of parts of False Bay and south of Cape Point (in the areas marked “ammunition dump” on the hydrographic charts) would reveal similarly interesting items…

Read the full article here.

Green Point lighthouse

Green Point lighthouse is South Africa’s first lighthouse, commissioned in 1824, and is currently the headquarters of the South African lighthouse service. The lighthouse is instantly recognisable, constructed from immensely thick masonry and painted with red and white diagonal bands. The walls at the base of the tower are almost two metres thick, because the building material is unworked stone bound by lime mortar.

The tower is 16 metres high, with its focal plane 20 metres above sea level. Currently the light is an 800,000 candela metal halide lamp. These facts mean that the light can be seen from 25 nautical miles away. The sound of its fog horn (of a variety called a nautophone) will also be familiar to local residents and boaters. We listened to it for ages while waiting for last year’s Freedom Swim to commence.

View of the lighthouse across Beach Road

Green Point lighthouse works in conjunction with Milnerton lighthouse and the Robben Island light to guide vessels safely into Table Bay, past Robben island and avoiding confusion from the myriad city lights. Technically the lighthouse is situated in Mouille Point. There used to be a Mouille Point light (commissioned in 1842) close to where the wreck of RMS Athens lies. It was decommissioned in 1908 when a light was established on the breakwater nearby. The base of the decommissioned Mouille Point lighthouse still survives at Granger Bay, and when I find it and photograph it I will show it to you.

The rotating lens at Green Point lighthouse

The lens, a thing of beauty, was supplied by Chance Brothers; their handiwork is also visible at the Slangkoppunt lighthouse.

The lighthouse is open to the public on weekdays between 10.00 am and 3.00 pm, for a cost of about R14. You can climb up the tower and also browse the fascinating historical displays inside the building. You could also fantasise about working for the lighthouse service, and crash back to earth with the realisation that in today’s age of unmanned lights, it’s a far less romantic job than you think it might be.

Large gear in the lens pedestal which rotates the optic

The gears to rotate the optic are encased

Lead safety treads on the original ladder up to the light

As usual, everything I know about this lighthouse that I didn’t learn by looking at it (i.e. most everything), is thanks to Gerald Hoberman’s wonderful Lighthouses of South Africa book.

Article: New York Times on the health of the ocean

Humans began adjusting ecosystems on land thousands of years before they were able to do significant damage to the ocean, but in the last five hundred years or so we have been catching up in the marine environment. If you think that five hundred years of significant human impact on the oceans sounds too long and the number should be more like 50 years, read Callum Roberts’s book Ocean of Life – in fact, do that anyway.

In this vein, Carl Zimmer wrote for the New York Times about a recent paper (paywalled on Science) about extinctions and reduction in numbers of animals in the world’s oceans. The article received a large amount of attention and was featured prominently, which is great for science and for the ocean.

When writing about conservation issues it is a challenge to maintain an air of hopefulness, in order to spur the reader on to positive action rather than smothering them in despair. Many books about the health of the world’s oceans struggle to walk this line. Authors sometimes appear unnaturally chirpy about terrible subjects, or to change their minds three quarters of the way through the book, becoming a cheerleader after seven chapters of doom and gloom. Unusually, Zimmer’s article (and, by extension the paper it stems from) are genuinely hopeful, because the paper’s authors sincerely believe there is something that can be done.

(The timeline below is from the paper; click on the image to go to the original on the Science website.)

While the paper sounds a warning that “today’s low rates of marine extinction may be the prelude to a major extinction pulse, similar to that observed on land during the industrial revolution, as the footprint of human ocean use widens” and “the terrestrial experience and current trends in ocean use suggest that habitat destruction is likely to become an increasingly dominant threat to ocean wildlife over the next 150 years”, the authors are convinced that prompt and decisive action can make a significant difference. The action would need to be primarily in the form of massive marine protected areas, strategically located, as well as a decrease in carbon emissions.

Zimmer’s full article can be read here. One of the authors of the paper he reviews is Stephen Palumbi, whose Extreme Life of the Sea is an excellent introduction to the entire ocean ecosystem, written in bite sized chunks with the flair of the Guinness Book of Records (but more academic prowess, obviously).

Article: Outside on Chris Fischer and Ocearch

I am a regular reader of Outside Online, and noted with interest an article about Chris Fischer and his Ocearch project that was published earlier this year.

Local shark afficionados (sounds pompous – sorry) may recall that Ocearch assisted most of the who’s who of South African shark science with a massive research effort in early 2012 that will hopefully bear fruit for years to come. We listened to project leader Ryan Johnson speak about it at Save Our Seas in late 2012, giving a detailed and reflective perspective from one of the project participants. On the other side of the coin, some anti-science sectors of the community made a lot of noise about issues that they had invented for themselves (you may recall, for example, the hysterical “five tons of chum” warnings in the press).

The Outside article is remarkably even handed and nuanced, giving Fischer his due without blindly drinking the kool aid of white shark sport fishing and the adrenaline-fuelled machismo that manifests itself on the deck of MV Ocearch. I recommend it (and am in good company). It is an excellent read, particularly if you aren’t up to speed on the topic. It’s one that is still highly contentious (the drama just moves around the world with MV Ocearch – the current hot spot is Australia).

Read the full article here.

Cape Town’s visible shipwrecks: RMS Athens at Mouille Point

An observant visitor to the promenade between Mouille Point and Green Point may notice something man-made sticking out of the ocean, less than 100 metres from shore. This artifact is the iron engine block of the Royal Mail Steamer Athens, which ran aground here in the great north westerly gale of 17 May 1865. Seventeen ships were wrecked during this colossal gale – reports of the events of that day (including a mention of the Athens) can be seen in this historical newspaper.

The engine block of RMS Athens is barely visible to the left of this image

It is possible to dive the wreck; indeed, owing to its accessibility from shore, it has been extensively “salvaged” in the last 150-plus years! There is more information about diving the wreck on wikivoyage, but suffice it to say it’s a shallow dive best done when there is no swell to speak of. The wreck is very broken up and overgrown with kelp and invertebrate life, by all accounts.

The stretch of shore where RMS Athens came to grief

There’s a great article on the history of RMS Athens on the Submerge website: click here to read it.

If you want to go and see the remains of the wreck, I’ve geotagged this instagram picture of the engine block. My photos of the engine block as seen from the sea were taken while we were aboard the Ocean Adventurer. If you’re interested in other visible shipwrecks around Cape Town, you could visit the Kakapo, the Clan Stuart, and (by boat) the BOS 400, to start with!

If you’re interested in visible shipwrecks, check out my ebook Cape Town’s Visible Shipwrecks: A Guide for Explorers!

Seli… gone!

Panorama of the beach at Blouberg where the Seli 1 lies

Our obsession with shipwrecks that stick out of the water is well documented. We keep a beady eye on the BOS 400, and while the Seli 1 was visible at Blouberg, Tony and I would take a drive out to visit her every few months. We haven’t been out to see her for well over a year, so I was delighted to find myself at Blouberg recently to get an update on her condition.

Look for the orange buoy - the Seli 1 is under it — Look for the orange buoy – the Seli 1 is under it

The wreck had gone from being intact when she ran aground in 2009, to looking a bit ropy, to separating into three pieces (above the surface, at least). After rough winter in 2012, a minor oil spill issued from the wreck, as part of it toppled over. That was the last we’d seen of her, but furious activity was going on behind the scenes as efforts were made to secure her removal.

Divers from the SA Navy were tasked with detonating explosives on the wreck to break her up, which they did in March 2013. This opened a compartment in the wreck from which oil leaked, necessitating a clean up operation. Finally, the remaining wreckage was cut into smaller pieces to expedite its collapse and dispersion on the sea floor.

The Seli 1 is under the orange buoy to the right of this image (hard to see!)

Today, the resting place of the Seli 1 is marked by an orange buoy, that is hard to spot from land – let alone in my photographs above. The site has been dived by a group of adventurous locals, and apart from a lengthy surface swim it’s a possibly promising wreck for Open Water divers to dive from shore (these are in short supply in Cape Town – the only others I can think of are the Clan Stuart and the Antipolis, and perhaps the Romelia).

If you’re interested in visible shipwrecks, check out my ebook Cape Town’s Visible Shipwrecks: A Guide for Explorers!

Scattered shipwreck: The anchors of SS Maori

The anchors of SS Maori on Hout Bay Main Road

Nautical artifacts – both physical objects and place names – can be observed all over Cape Town. One, which I’ve driven past many, many times without even noticing, can be seen on Hout Bay Main Road just between the Shell Garage and Hout Bay Manor. (If you want the precise location, check out this instagram post, which I geotagged.) The anchors of SS Maori, a steamship that ran aground in 1909 in a bay now named after her, are on display under the auspices of Hout Bay Museum. The wreck of the Maori is a very popular dive site, and is eminently suitable for Open Water and beginner divers owing to the depth at which she lies, and the comforting feeling one has of being close to shore whilst sheltered in Maori Bay.

The rings and shackles at the top of the anchor

Plaque describing the wreck and location of the SS Maori

The bell of SS Maori can be seen inside the Hout Bay Museum. The wreck is over 60 years old, and as Peter Southwood points out on the dive site’s wikivoyage page,

This is a historical wreck and is now protected by legislation. Removing wreckage or artifacts is a criminal offence.

Article: Randall Munroe (xkcd) on disappearing oceans

Have you ever wondered:

What would happen if all the bodies of water on Earth magically disappeared?

The answer – involving ships plummeting kilometres down to the ocean floor – is entertaining. Randall Munroe of xkcd.com explores this question as part of his What If? series. He has removed all the ships from the sea. He has discussed slowly draining the world’s oceans, and in a follow-up, dumping all that water on Mars. Now he drains the oceans in an instant:

The Titanic sank in about two miles of water. After it disappeared beneath the surface, the two halves of the ship took between 5 and 15 minutes to reach the bottom. Without the ocean there, it would have reached the bottom in about 30 seconds, striking it at airliner cruising speed.

As usual, it’s the stuff that happens afterwards that is the most interesting. Hang onto your seats.

Read the full What If? here.