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.
Long Beach - dive!
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.
I often tag along with Tony on weekends when he’s diving with students. I take lots of photos (including some of the students) and usually give the students a disc of pictures after they’re finished their course. People LOVE to see themselves underwater!
Tony suggested a project that I’m just busy finishing, which is to include on the discs of student photos a set of photos of the creatures we see most often when diving in Cape Town. The idea is to get them started in identifying marine creatures, and sharpening their eyes to see something interesting. Not everyone has books on marine life to hand, and it can be overwhelming when you first start looking up creatures. More than once I’ve enthusiastically and firmly identified something I’ve seen in False Bay, only to find that it’s not found south of Madagascar!
These are pictures I’ve taken all over the place, over a period of six months (since I got my camera). I’m just about done but this will always be a work in progress – you can see the complete collection of photos on my flickr page. I am totally amazed by the colours! Click on the image to go directly to the set.
Cape Peninsula marine life
If I’ve misidentified any of the creatures, please let me know! It’s harder than you might think to figure out what’s what… Even with the expert assistance of Guido, Georgina and George Branch!
This beach is a popular training site for the dive schools in the greater Cape Town area. If you’re one of Tony’s students, here’s how to get there. There’s a safe parking area, public restrooms, and flat calm waters suitable for swimming, snorkeling, and of course diving!
It has a very easy shore entry and the dive site has much to offer. Many a recently qualified diver wants to see no more of Long Beach as they will most likely have done several training dives there for the duration of their course and will feel they have seen it all.
Agile klipfish at Long Beach
This is so far from the truth. In reality few divers, students or instructors venture far from the beaten track, i.e. down the pipeline, around the wreck, and back to the beach. We built a small artificial reef less than 50 metres from the shore and not too far north of the barge wreck, yet very few people have found it. There is also a wreck approximately 160 metres to the southeast of the slipway, again seldom visited.
John Dory at Long Beach in January 2010
The list goes on and there is an entire chapter on Wikitravel written by Peter Southwood which if you read this article and follow the routes laid out, it takes you to a whole host of things such as huge anchor chains, a massive anchor, concrete blocks, a pipe structure, several smaller parts of wrecked fishing boats and more.
During Open Water dives much of the time is spent on skills and if you do not venture too far off you will have seen but a small area of the dive site. We dive there often, I have done a little over 200 dives there this past year and we seldom fail to see something new. Despite the keen sense we have for exploring , as you become more and more relaxed in the water, you read a few books on ocean creatures, slowly you start to see things you never noticed before. Your sense of awareness increases, your knowledge increases and so does your sightings.
Juvenile Cape sole at Long Beach
Clare recently discovered a baby Cape sole in the sand (it’s in the picture above in the top right quadrant near the middle of the picture… I promise!). They have been there at this time of year for ages, we have just never seen one but they have been there for sure. Another way to ensure you see a lot more than you expect to is to slow down. The vast majority of Clare’s photos are taken during the long periods she spends hanging around while I perform skills with students. This time spent without finning off into the distance also encourages creatures that hid away when they heard us coming to slowly peek out to see what’s happening, creating some memorable photo opportunities.
You will be amazed at what you can see on the sand in shallow water. The life changes with depth and deeper dives will also produce a different spectrum of life as you move down or up through the water column. Long Beach has a lot to offer, but to see something different you must venture a little further than you did during your training dives.
You can visit the same dive site every day for a year and something will always be different. Different seasons bring different life to different parts of the ocean all year long.
I’ve mentioned how a stray hair in one’s mask can turn a dive from pleasant to a simulated near-drowning experience… For girls, it’s usually just a matter of putting one’s hair out of the way. For guys, it can be more complicated.
The problem is designer stubble: not all gentlemen like the clean-shaven look. A full-scale moustache really precludes a career as a scuba diver, but there’s no reason why Andre Agassi or his ilk can’t don a mask and hit the ocean.
Marinus gets a personalised application of Vaseline
The solution to the problem – assuming you don’t fancy a pass with a razor – is Vaseline. The generous application prior to a dive of petroleum jelly to the top lip, and any other stubbled portions of the male face that fall beneath the skirt of a mask, will solve the problem ONE TIME.
Of course, if you can get someone to wade into the sea and actually apply it for you, that’s a bonus!
Tony and I learn all sorts of things from his students. Gerard is a particularly rich mine of information. Here he demonstrates how to roll off a dive boat. The fact that it’s parked on the beach is neither here nor there. The pictures were taken by me in Sodwana in October 2010.
The flow of knowledge doesn’t only go one way with Tony’s students. They have much to teach us, if we will only listen! Here’s a tip that Tony already knew, and which made me laugh my head off at first, but which I then decided was pretty cool.
Gerard demonstrating the plastic bag technique for putting on a wetsuit
As demonstrated by Gerard (I’ve seen Hilton do this as well, while we were on the boat): a plastic shopping bag helps your wetsuit to slide on more easily. Put it over each foot as you pull on the corresponding leg, and then over each hand as you do your arms.
That’s not Gerard’s beer bottle in the background, by the way. Long Beach parking area is a crazy place on a Saturday morning!
When I worked at Calypso in Durban, we’d do students’ confined water skills in the Avis Snorkel Lagoon at uShaka Marine World. It’s a beautiful setting. Here’s a short clip of me doing skills with Open Water students. At the start, I had to reprimand one of the group because he kept blowing bubbles at the batfish. No fish were harmed in the making of this video!
The students are practising buddy breathing (it was still in the Open Water course at that stage). Notice how they each take two breaths off the regulator, indicating one… two… with their fingers so their buddy knows how long he has to wait to get his turn. Notice also how I encourage them to exhale while they don’t have a regulator in their mouths. Towards the end of the clip they practise breathing off one another’s alternate air source (octo).
Many of Tony’s students come to him with extensive skin diving experience. Living in Cape Town, it’s almost obligatory to enjoy at least one lobster braai during the season (and often many more). Sometimes the veteran lobster-divers struggle at first with breathing through a regulator – their instinct while under water is to hold their breath (it’s illegal to take lobster when you’re on scuba). But their comfort in the water (and being used to the cold) stands them in good stead, once Tony’s tapped them on the regulator a few times to remind them to inhale!
Lobster on a wreck at Long Beach
We see West Coast rock lobster (not crayfish – those are freshwater creatures) in both False Bay and on the Atlantic side. They are gregarious, and can often be found sheltering in cracks and under overhangs, in quite large groups.
West coast rock lobster on the BOS 400 wreck
It’s a pleasure to do a deep wreck dive such as on the Maori and on the BOS 400, and see hordes of good-sized rock lobster teeming all over the wreck. Some of the shallower sites are definitely over-fished, and we only see really big specimens when we dive beyond the range of your average skin diving lobster hunter. On Gerard’s first deep wreck dive in Smitswinkel Bay, we hadn’t been on the wreck for three minutes when I turned around to see him excitedly waving a MASSIVE lobster at me, the biggest either of us had ever seen. Some finger waggling and head shaking convinced him to replace Mr Lobster in his home, but I think Gerard was heartbroken.
Small rock lobster at Long Beach
Rock lobster are almost impossible to farm. At the Two Oceans Aquarium on our crash course in marine biology we learned that there are 13 larval stages, during which time the creature drifts hundreds of kilometres offshore through a huge variety of water conditions that it would be impossible to replicate in a mariculture setting. The larval phases can last up to two years. Lobsters grow very, very slowly and can live to the age of 50. There’s some nice detail on the Two Oceans Aquarium website.
Rock lobsters on the Maori
They eat crabs, abalone, starfish, snails and sea urchins – this latter fact makes them quite important in the ecosystem as a whole. I’ve mentioned before that juvenile abalone shelter among sea urchins. If there are too many lobsters, they eat too many urchins (and too many abalone) and this leads to a decline in the population of abalone. It’s a fine balance.
Rock lobster at Long Beach
Lobsters are incredibly sensitive to the level of oxygen in the water, which sometimes leads to what look like mass walkouts onto the beach when there’s a red tide or similar event leading to (near-)anoxic conditions on our coastline. What actually happens is that they move away from the de-oxygenated water where the red tide has died, and get stranded on the beach by a retreating tide. Once when Tony was landing a dive boat at Miller’s Point, he was waiting for a chance to use the slipway next to a fishing boat that was packed to the gills with lobster. The captain said they’d found a spot where thousands of lobster were strolling together in orderly formation across the ocean floor, and he’d just scooped them up. (He would not share where this magical location was, but the lobster were probably moving to more highly oxygenated waters.) Having substantially exceeded his quota, the fisherman was somewhat twitchy about being pulled over by the authorities!
Rock lobster on the move on the Maori
Poaching of rock lobster is a big problem in South Africa. They’re a very valuable commodity – you just need to go and have a seafood platter at a Camps Bay restaurant to see what damage it can do to your wallet – and easily accessible to anyone who can hold their breath and is prepared to do a bit of rock scrambling. The government Department of Environmental Affairs tries to manage stocks by implementing a closed season, catch and size limits.
Currently, you may only take lobster that measure greater than 8 centimetres from the front of their head to the end of their carapace (NOT to the tip of their tails, as I used to think – fortunately I’m not a lobster fisherman!);
You must have a MPA permit to take lobster (same form at the post office as the scuba diving one);
The season runs from November to April (the dates vary by year);
You may only take lobster during the day – between sunrise and sunset;
You’re not allowed to sell them;
You are not allowed to take females in berry (with eggs), or lobsters with soft shells that have just moulted;
There are also regulations about the number of rock lobster you may transport at once, or have in your possession.
Many people seem to think that they’ll experience claustrophobia when they put their faces in the water, with their breathing restricted to their regulator, wearing a wetsuit, and having all that water around them.
Here are some facts…
Breathing from a regulator
A regulator or demand valve is a brilliantly designed piece of equipment that attaches to a hose linked to a cylinder of compressed air. It’s constructed so that it’s easy to breathe from – no more effort is required than breathing without one, it gives you as much air as you need, and you can even cough or (I know this from sad experience) vomit with it in your mouth and you won’t have ANY trouble at all with the consequences… If you get my drift. In the unlikely event that it fails, it won’t fail in the “off” position and stop your air supply; it will free flow (deliver a continuous stream of air). One of the skills you do in your Open Water course is breathing off a free-flowing regulator, so you are fully equipped to handle this situation.
Your regulator delivers more than enough air, NOT less than you get breathing on land. If you do at some point feel as though you’re not getting enough, it’s because you’re breathing too shallowly. When you dive, your breathing must be deep and slow. Extracting the full goodness out of each breath maximises your enjoyment: your air will last longer, and you’ll feel more relaxed.
Bubbles rising in the Atlantic
Having to breathe out of your regulator – as opposed to being able to go take one breath in each corner of the room, or open your mouth as wide as it can go – is not restrictive at all. If you think about it, when you breathe on land, you’re drawing in the air that is in front of your face. There’s no hardship in not being able to take in the air from down the passageway – that’s not where you are.
What’s more, having the regulator in your mouth only feels funny for the first few minutes. It’s made with soft rubbery flanges that fit in your mouth (mouthpieces come in different sizes, too) and once it’s seated properly you won’t even know it’s there. If you’ve snorkeled, you know what it feels like to have a mouthpiece between your teeth. Breathing from a regulator is easier than breathing from a snorkel, and what’s more you don’t have to worry about rogue waves splashing water into your breathing apparatus! So if you can snorkel, you can definitely scuba dive.
All that equipment
Some people worry about wearing a mask, and think they might feel closed in with one covering their eyes and nose. Firstly, it’s important to note that it’s essential for the mask to cover your nose so that you can equalise your ears . If you wore swimmers’ goggles, they would get compressed onto your face at depth (which would hurt, and might look funny). This way, you can exhale through your nose into the mask to equalise (one of many techniques).
To be honest, a mask is no more claustrophobic to wear than a pair of wrap around sunglasses, and it’s probably going to be a lot more comfortable once you’ve found the one that suits your face shape.
Oscar enjoying all that space
Others worry about wearing a wetsuit, that they won’t feel free to move. They’re right about that: wearing a wetsuit on land is one of the least comfortable things you can do. They’re hot, restrictive, and tight. In the water, however, you won’t even notice it’s there. Wetsuits keep you warm (important in the Cape) and protect you from marine creatures that might sting or scratch you as you pass through their domain. Deciding you won’t like or try diving because wetsuits make you feel cramped is like deciding you aren’t going to eat Haagen-Dazs ice cream because you don’t like the font they write their product labels in.
All that water
Finally, some people worry that they’ll feel trapped under the weight of all the water above them, and that it’s impossibly far to get to the surface. There are a few answers to this:
Firstly, you’ll learn a skill called a CESA, or Controlled Emergency Swimming Ascent, on your Open Water course. This enables you to swim for the surface in a controlled, non-panicky manner if you need to. This is not something you’ll just do if you’re feeling uncomfortable one day – it’s for when you run out of air and have no buddy nearby to borrow an octo from.
Second, when you learn to dive you’re not suddenly going to start spending all your time at 30 metres. The PADIOpen Water course qualifies you to dive to 18 metres, and you have to do an Advanced course to get to 30 metres, and a Deep specialty to get to 40 metres. So these things come with time. Some divers have no interest in deep diving, and there’s nothing wrong with that – Tony and I spend most of our time in less than 10 metres of water because the best and easiest photographic opportunities are there, and we can stay down a looooong time because our air lasts forever! Your first diving experiences will be in relatively shallow water, and only as you get used to being underwater will your instructor gradually increase the depth you go to.
Looking up in the clear Atlantic
I will admit that when visibility is poor, one loses the feeling of having three beautiful dimensions around one to play in. But this is infrequent, and if you’re diving for fun, then you hopefully won’t have to get in the water when conditions aren’t great (unless you’re desperate to get wet, in which case you won’t care!). But the feeling of space when one drops into the gin-clear water of the Atlantic on a summer’s day is so extreme as to make one almost dizzy. Being underwater is the closest I get to flying, and I love it.
In conclusion, diving involves a fair amount of unfamiliar equipment, and is quite different to our day-to-day experiences as human beings on planet earth. You may not like it; but you probably will. If you’re not sure, sign up for a Discover Scuba Diving experience (DSD). Tony even sometimes does these in people’s swimming pools – just to give you a taste of the freedom that comes with breathing underwater. You can make an educated decision about diving after that.
Some of Tony’s students needed to do a deep dive, so we paid a visit to the SAS Transvaal in Smitswinkel Bay, on a gorgeous Sunday morning.
Bollard on the SAS TransvaalOutgrowths on the SAS Transvaal
I was trying out a new seasickness remedy – ginger pills – although the sea turned out to be so benign I scarcely needed them. This particular experiment is going to require repeated observations before we can even draw tentative conclusions, unless I go out in a storm, pepped up on ginger capsules, and suffer no ill effects. But I’m reluctant to try that.
Overgrown wreckage of the SAS Transvaal
The SAS Transvaal was a naval frigate that was scuttled in 1978 using explosive charges. She is identical to the SAS Good Hope, which lies in the same bay. The wreck is long – nearly 94 metres – and quite broken up but still readily identifiable as a large ship. She makes an eerie creaking sound, which is at once creepy and wonderful. Auditory stimulation is rare on a dive (part of the reason I like diving…) but can be very special.
Tony swimming over the wreck
I’ve dived this wreck twice before, the most recent being in September last year with Kate and a big group of Tony’s current and former students. (This also happened to be the very first dive I did with my Sony Cybershot DSC-TX5 camera.) There was far more light and visibility that time – the photos in the first half of this post are from that dive – hopefully you can see the difference in the water colour and amount of light.
SAS Transvaal wreckage
This time, we descended slowly, on the shot line. I was extremely wary of nitrogen narcosis, having had a bad experience on the wreck of the SAS Good Hope late last year. After orienting ourselves on the wreck, we dropped onto the sand so that the guys could do skills.
View along the SAS Transvaal
This time, it was dark, but the visibility was pretty good once we’d passed through a steep thermocline, above which the water was green and soupy. Once again I wished for a giant spotlight to illuminate the whole wreck at once – the dimensions of the vessel are astounding and the colours down there are spectacular, but all the reds, oranges and purples are totally washed out and only show up in a camera flash or torch beam.
Purple soft coral
There’s a lot of soft coral adorning the wreck, including my favourite – the wonderfully named sunburst soft corals. They look completely grey until you shine a torch on them.
Sunburst soft coral with polyps extended
The ubiquitous mauve sea cucumbers were a prolific presence, as usual. They form a large component of the biomass at that depth, and are clustered in huge groups all over the wreck.
Orange gas flame nudibranch and purple soft coral on the SAS Transvaal
I found an orange gas-flame nudibranch, which made me very proud (it was the start of a nudibranch bonanza at Partridge Point later in the day…) and a pair of redfingers, who seemed to be having a fight (or courting) until I disturbed them. This isn’t a great picture, but I can’t usually photograph moving targets at all on deep dives, so for me it’s a bit of an achievement!
Dodgy photo of redfingers on the SAS Transvaal
These dives go so quickly – our air and bottom time were up pretty much at the same time – and we made a leisurely ascent, with Tony deploying a jumbo-sized SMB at the safety stop. While he was doing so, he dropped his knife, and I made a spectacular catch – I managed to perform an acrobatic swoop towards it as it tumbled downwards, all the while aware of my own depth and comfortable that if it went too deep I’d let it go. I felt rather smug after that and made sure that everyone had seen my moves once we were back on the boat.
