Everything ocean related, with a special focus on scuba diving the rich coastal waters of Cape Town, South Africa.
Here’s an octopus we met on a night dive at Long Beach this week – I mentioned it in the latest newsletter. Look out for the barehead goby who decides that one of his tentacles is too good to resist trying to munch on!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAL6Nld69vI&w=540]
Here’s a video clip from a night dive we did in June this year at Long Beach. Look out for the box jelly with one tentacle, a klipfish, the beaked sandfish digging themselves into the sand, two warty pleurobranchs, an octopus hiding under a piece of plywood, a cuttlefish under the wreck, a two tone fingerfin, and a little jutjaw (we think).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1oU7w_GFkk&w=540]
This is an early night effort taken on my Sea&Sea camera with torches instead of a strobe. The resulting hotspots are eliminated when using the Bonica Snapper, provided the light is positioned appropriately.
Here’s a properly edited summary of our dive last Sunday at Shark Alley. Notice how leisurely the cowsharks are, and then how the action speeds up towards the end of the clip while we were being harrassed by that female who wanted a piece of Clare’s (and others’) kit.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWGiNZprqfg&w=540]
If you’re a Cape Town diver, I certainly hope you’ve taken advantage of the incredible – I repeat, incredible – shark diving opportunity that is right on your doorstep. I’m not talking about shysharks… I’ve got the sevengill cowsharks at Shark Alley, just inshore of Pyramid Rock, in mind.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-vP7W5TEBk&w=540]
Shark Alley is a shore entry site just past Miller’s Point, though it’s a tricky climb down the hill and over the rocks so many dive centres do boat dives there as well. The maximum depth is about 12 metres, and the site is characterised by beautiful pink-encrusted rocks, sea urchins, and waving kelp fronds. That’s not why divers go there, however. They go there to visit the cowsharks.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiZs3YOG1-c&w=540]
Just a few metres offshore, in a bare patch in a V-shaped space in the kelp, we settle on the sandy bottom and wait for the sharks. They don’t disappoint – Shark Alley is their meeting place, where they hang out during the day, and you’re almost guaranteed a sighting or five.
These beautiful creatures grow to up to 3 metres in length – a lot of fish – and are curious, swimming close to divers to take a look. You can see their eyes following you as they pass by, close enough to touch… But don’t!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoiQSWdaSnU&w=540]
Not much is known about these sharks. They are ambush predators, hunting in packs, in poor visibility (so a night dive or a dive at Shark Alley when the sea is very murky is something to think about very carefully). They eat other sharks, seals, fish, and pretty much anything they can get their teeth into.
We’ve seen as many as 15 different sharks on one dive, and on repeat dives we have recognised the same specimens over and over. Many of the sharks have big bite and tooth marks on their sides, and bits out of their fins… Some of this is from mating behaviour (apparently a bit violent), but possibly also from fights between the sharks. They will eat each other if the opportunity arises, being fairly indiscriminate when it comes to diet.
It’s not clear whether they leave Shark Alley at night to go hunting, or whether it’s a place they come to to rest, socialise, or hide. The actual number of cowsharks passing in and out of False Bay isn’t clear either – we don’t know what fraction of the total population the sharks we see at Shark Alley represent.
Some of the sharks we see have white spots on their backs – one in particular we call Tipp-Ex because of the size and number of spots. The spots are caused by a fungus – I’m not sure if it’s harmful to the sharks, and whether they catch it from one another through contact when feeding or mating.
[youtube=http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=aIKU_peK7Fs&w=540]
The photos in this post were taken on the same dive during which we had a close encounter with a very confident female cowshark. You can see that the visibility was extremely poor (so apologies for the photo quality!). The video footage is from prior dives.
(Forgive the overly dramatic headline… It’s worthy of a B Grade horror movie!)
Tony has described our encounter with a very confident female sevengill cowshark last weekend. I don’t remember it too clearly – I was very stressed – but watching the camera footage from the incident brought some of it back. Tony’s camera was on the whole time, but he (obviously, and thankfully) was not too concerned with getting good footage. He was more interested in making sure the shark didn’t munch my kit!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5bNezwfFCc&w=540]
What I do remember is sitting on the sand, with Tami and Kate to my right and slightly behind me, and Tony a short distance away also to the right. The shark swam very close to me – so close that I wrapped my arms around my body and pulled my hoses and camera against myself. I don’t think she touched me at this point, but there were only centimetres between us. As she passed me I turned with her to check that Kate was all right (it was her first sevengill dive). The shark then went behind me, and while I could not feel anything, I was aware that she was right in my personal space and had her mouth on some part of my kit.
At that point I buried myself face down in the gravel (so did Kate), and Tami gave the shark a few (her words) “girly slaps” to try and deter it. I remember making some undignified whimpering noises. Tony then swam over and delivered some justice.
It’s hard to tell who’s who in the video, but I have a black mask, my BCD says SEAC on it, and Kate is in a grey wetsuit. Tami’s mask is bright pink and she’s wearing a ScubaPro BCD.
What you can see from the footage is how many times the shark came back – it was persistent, even after Tony had whacked it on the head with his camera – and the large, stressed bubble clouds coming from me, Kate and Tami who were all close together when the shark decided to investigate my pillar valve. None of us had a lot of air left when we reached the shore… My heart was still racing hours afterwards.
Accounts by surfers who have had trouble with sharks often involve punching the shark on the nose… This female had to be smacked a few times before she got the message – it’s clearly not the cure-all that it’s billed as. However, Tony was avoiding hitting the shark on the tip of her nose, which is supposed to be extremely sensitive, so as not to hurt her. Trust him to be concerned for the shark’s wellfare while it was harrassing us! He said the shark felt VERY solid.
An image that is stuck in my mind from the dive is the cowshark, perhaps a metre and a half away from Tony, with her tail whipping in the water column and her (usually smiling) jaws snapping like Elmo from Sesame Street. Only more scary.
Gordon, a visitor from the UK who was the fifth member of our group (also on his first cowshark dive), told us that he’d been swimming at the back of the group, and that this shark had been tailing us for some 50 metres before she started making trouble. She’d eyed Kate’s fins, and then thought better of it (clearly Gordon’s stern gaze worked wonders)!
Cowsharks are generally confident and curious, but this is the first time we’ve experienced anything like this. The will swim close to divers – sometimes very close – but they’ve never initiated contact and in fact when Tony once brushed against one by accident it took off at speed in the opposite direction. I’m not sure what to make of this – just last week the Scuba Shack newsletter spoke of a cowshark that had investigated one of the divers’ pillar valves. Same shark?
Following on from my review of the Bonica Snapper underwater video camera, here are a few pictures to show the camera, the housing and the component parts.
News of a very cool art installation that doubles as an artificial reef off Cancun, Mexico, in what looks like delightfully warm water! Jason de Caires Taylor is an artist who specialises in underwater art. The 400 life size sculptures of people are constructed from a cement mix that encourages coral growth.
There are tons of pictures on the artist’s website. Here’s a video off youtube:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kvaQuXcsVk&w=540]
The visibility is for miles, and the sculptures are installed in water shallow enough to snorkel in. Looks like an awesome place to visit!
Here’s a rough edit of a lovely dive we did at Long Beach last year (Clare twisted my arm to put this up – I’m not happy with the state of polish of the final version), in 14 degree water with 7 metre visibility. The surface conditions were choppy, as you can see at the end of the video, but under the surface it was lovely.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1jjITWidvg&w=540]
There’s lots to see. Early on, look out for the common sandprawn (the large, white shrimpy thing). We see lots of their discarded carapaces at Long Beach but this is the only one we’ve seen with a sandprawn inside to date.
There’s also a huge cloud of fry – not sure which fish species, but clearly the imminent onset of spring was encouraging breeding! There’s a very brief shot of a chubby clingfish – the small orange chap clinging onto some sea lettuce, of which there is plenty. Watch out for the Cape topshell on the kelp, and a nudibranch egg ribbon on some green seaweed.
There’s an octopus, a super klipfish, a surprisingly tame puffadder shyshark and his relative the dark shyshark, and a fat longsnout pipefish. We saw a box sea jelly and a night light sea jelly, a peacock fanworm, and my favourite warty pleurobranch. And, of course, there are barehead gobies…
The video concludes with a shot of the inside of the barge wreck at Long Beach.
I recently switched from my Sea&Sea 1G and underwater housing to a digital video camera manufactured by Bonica, specifically for underwater use. Finally the long awaited moment arrived and the Bonica underwater video camera arrived.
The camera is compact to say the least, and has a tight fitting silicone skin that enables you to snorkel and play in the pool without the housing as the silicone skin is waterproof to 3 meters. I doubt I will ever test this as what’s the point of having a housing and not using it?
The camera housing looks sturdy and robust, has three clips and a wide, deep-set O ring. The camera has strong specs, resolution of 8MP (3200 X 2400) for stills and 1440 x 1080 HD video. It has a 3x optical zoom and can handle 60 fps in HD.
Storage is on an SD card and it is claimed to be able to handle up to a 32GB SDHC card. I have a 4GB card and a spare which is plenty. Besides, the battery is only able to give about an hour and a half so a battery change can coincide with a card change. The screen is a 2.4 inch and I found it a little difficult to see clearly without a shield of sorts to prevent glare on the window.
The accessories I have are a wide angle lens, this must be unscrewed and tightened underwater otherwise an air pocket remains giving you a line across the centre of your movie.
The camera also came with an orange filter for the ocean and a yellow filter for fresh water, an arm for the light and a single 6 diode light. The light has two settings allowing you to either use full power or a setting where you can dial the brightness up or down. It takes 8 AA batteries and I chose Hahnel 2800 NiMH rechargables. I always test batteries before I use them and these babies had my light burning brightly for 3 and a half hours with no sign of letting up. This was test enough. (Remember to leave any underwater lights in water while testing as they may overheat.)
I have attached the wide angle lens cover to the lanyard with a short string. This keeps it from getting lost and keeps it out of the way while filming. I also made a small plastic shroud as a lens shade to reduce the glare and enable me to see the LCD screen a lot easier.
The controls are really easy to use and switching from video to still is one button press. The power button is away from all the others so it is almost impossible to turn it off by mistake. I was a little puzzled as to why the camera comes with two remotes, but hey, I am not complaining.
The quality is exceptional, keeping the camera steady and moving really slow is going to give you really good footage and the auto focus is fast.
The housing hinge pin is showing signs of rust after a short time; this has also happened with every other camera I have. The answer seems to be to remove the pin from time to time, clean it and slide it back in with some silicone.
The swivel on the light arm broke after a few days and I removed one of the two balls it swivels on, as this is adequate for the required angles you my want your light to be at.
The microphone records all the sounds of the zoom and this needs to be fixed during editing. All you do is add a pleasant tune to the movie clip and its all sorted.
Overall the camera is exceptionally good value and the quality of the footage is amazing.
Windows Vista does not handle the file size very well. My computer has 1GB of RAM and this is barely adequate – it is recommended you have at least 2GB… But hey, that’s a Windows issue and not the Bonica.
There is a gorgeous star blaasop living in the Lagoon tank at uShaka Marine World where Tony and I dived last month. We saw him a year ago when we visited, and he’s grown a lot since then. Same as last year, we found him hanging out at the window looking into the Open Ocean tank – perhaps dreaming of growing up to be a shark one day.
He’s very friendly, and swam with me for quite a distance, occasionally making alarming forays towards my camera (which made for some great photo opportunities). I love his compact little body and the way his fins move back and forth at his sides – they seem far too small to propel his girth anywhere significant!
Here’s a short clip Tony took of the blaasop. Initially he was hiding in a packing pallette – during this part of the clip there’s an oil spot on the camera lens. Subsequently you see him investigating me. My hand is in a fist because I’d already been nibbled on by our cheeklined wrasse friend – looks like I am winding up for a punch but it was just a precautionary measure to protect my fingers.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AshMxrl7pE&w=540]
