Videography – Page 21 – Learn to Dive Today Blog

Sea life: Klipfish

I find klipfish the most frustrating creatures to identify – they come in a bewildering array of colours and patterns, and I am waiting impatiently for Guido Zsilavecz of SURG‘s book on klipfish to be completed!

Klipfish are lazy swimmers, and green and brown ones are usually seen very well camouflaged among fronds of sea lettuce or kelp. They tend to move in exactly the same way as the seaweed, allowing themselves to be pushed around by the surge, which makes them hard to spot.

There are also the more colourful variety – busy purple patterns being the most common – who hide themselves where there’s a lot of coraline algae and other purple seaweed growth. While they tend to spend most of their time curled lazily against the side of rocks or on the pipeline, they can swim away with startling speed when they feel nervous.

These fish usually seem to be solitary, but Tony and I saw a pair of them fighting – we think – at Long Beach a week or two ago. Since they seem fairly territorial, that may have been the source of the dispute. Whatever they were doing, it was the first time we’ve seen more than one of these fish in the same place, let alone interacting.

On Saturday I met a klipfish at Long Beach who was incredibly tame. He submitted to (and seemed to enjoy) having his chin tickled, head butted my mask a few times, and nibbled at my bubbles after trying to swim into by BC. I was interacting with him while Tony was doing the CESA skill with a student, and it was wonderful. Feeling that the fish are noticing you, rather than just swimming past oblivious (or hiding in panic), is very special.

Here’s an extremely dodgy video (the sea lettuce was somewhat annoying) of me and Corné (with the orange SMB) having some quality klipfish time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f4OV41unEc&w=540]

Beautiful batfish

We had a beautiful dive in the Lagoon Tank at uShaka Marine World earlier this month on our way home from Sodwana. The longfin batfish are some of Tony’s favourite fish (he’s also very fond of Moorish idols). They are robust, and these particular specimens (most of them) are in such good shape that they look as though they are made of plastic. When Tony used to teach confined water skills in the Lagoon, the batfish would occasionally take umbrage at his mask strap or a piece of his gear, and come and bite him on the head.

They swim by in a school, very leisurely, but are capable of extraordinary bursts of speed – they seem to know when you’re trying to take a photograph.

One of the batfish has a wound on his head at the moment – perhaps from a snorkeler’s fin, or a stray weight dropped carelessly into the tank. Or, a gunfight. One never knows. Whatever the cause, he didn’t seem sluggish or to be struggling to keep up with the rest of the school.

Here they are, briefly, in motion. Magnificent!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7Bnmvck_II&w=540]

Sea life: Giant short tailed sting ray

This morning Tony had students at Long Beach and I tagged along. We swam out for depth, and in about 7.5 metres of water – brittlestar country – we found this absolute beauty resting on the sand. Can you see what it is?

Tony and Kate have seen two rays so far this week – one in the wreckage on the Clan Stuart, and another near the yellow buoy at Long Beach. This one was further north, in fairly deep water. It let me film it for a while, and then got annoyed at my heavy (somewhat excited) breathing and left.

We generally see the rays starting in late October to early November – basking in the sand at Long Beach, and even hanging about in the shallow water near the slipway at Miller’s Point. It’s a fantastic experience to spot one.

: Spiny tail

According to Georgina’s book, these rays give birth to live young, about 40 centimetres across, and grow to about 2 metres across. The specimen we saw was at least 1.5 metres across. The young are born folded up like crepes, and unfold their wings as they enter the water. Short tail sting rays are thought to feed on sand-dwelling invertebrates, grinding up shells to get at the creatures inside. It must take a LOT of eating to keep a body that size going!

When our ray left, he stirred up a huge cloud of sand and then swam so low over Kate’s head that she had to lift her hand up to fend him off. I guess we can add rays to the list of creatures who don’t give way to divers!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGQmoTXLlG8]

The Two Oceans Aquarium housed a gorgeous giant short tailed sting ray called Olive, who passed away recently. She was magnificent, and loved to swim up the glass in the I&J Predator Exhibit where she was housed.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmnRUGDwDhs&w=540]

The biter

The Biter was a cheeklined wrasse whom we encountered while diving in the Lagoon Tank at uShaka Marine World in Durban earlier in October. He caused great amusement to both me and Tony because of his persistent camera-hogging activities, suspicious-looking face, and willingness to nibble on exposed body parts.

He actually reminded me very much of the Number Two Cat (so-called for her place in the hierarchy of Tony’s neighbour’s 17 cats), who likes to stick her nose in your face at every opportunity to make sure that she’s still centre of attention.

But the Biter is a fish…

Making investigations — Making preliminary investigations

Here’s a rough edit of some of the clips Tony took of him. Notice how he tries to bite my finger (at this point Tony laughs through his regulator), and how he picks up a rock the size of a cherry from the tank floor, and appears to swallow it (I didnt see it come out, and I was watching). During parts of the clip he was so close to the lens that the camera couldn’t focus! The other sounds you can hear on the clip are bubbles, and the autofocus of Tony’s camera.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vr&w=540l-Xtyh_JY]

Backward roll

On a boat dive off a rubber duck, all the divers roll backwards into the water at the same time. The skipper stops the boat, counts down, and everyone rolls backwards off the pontoon simultaneously. There are good reasons for the emphasis on doing it at the same time:

if there’s even a slight wind or current, the boat drifts
once divers hit the water, they start drifting too

Even a second’s hesitation can combine with one of the above to have you landing on top of another diver. It may not hurt you, but the diver already in the water is unlikely to be wearing a hard hat to protect them from your cylinder! If you miss the count down for whatever reason, WAIT on the boat. The skipper will bring you around and drop you again when it’s clear.

The alternative – rolling into the water on top of everyone else – will ensure that you don’t get invited back for more boat dives!

Ever wondered what it’s like to do a backward roll? Check out this video I took at the start of a dive on Bikini, Two Mile Reef, in Sodwana.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQr9t8vfFdI&w=540]

Chunderstruck: The Movie

We had some rough days on the boat in Sodwana, which prompted Gerard to adopt AC/DC’s Thunderstruck as our theme tune. Fritz filmed a launch and a beaching, and combined with my primitive movie editing skills, here is the result:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VYuOi8uhvg&w=540]

Deep Specialty course

When I started diving, I did not like deep dives. I hated the boat rides to get to the dive sites – the combination of a vivid imagination and a few scary experiences makes me something of a tense sailor. I also get seasick when the boat stops and the sea is choppy – swell plus motor fumes is a bad combination!

Time has improved the situation. I’m a much more relaxed boat passenger than I was a year ago. I make sure to travel with skippers I trust. I make sure I’m seated near the back of the boat (for bumpiness), and I wedge my feet into the footstraps and hold on to the ropes. I’ve been lost at sea for a little while, and while unpleasant, it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be.

I’ve also conquered my fear of deep water. Friday’s dive in Smitswinkel Bay was the first deep dive that I’ve been totally relaxed about, before and during. I’ve learned to trust my equipment, and to trust my buddy. I know how I feel at 30 metres down (sharp as a stack of wet newspapers), and I consciously relax. I have breathed off Tony’s octo at the bottom of the ocean (I sucked air prodigiously on my first couple of deep dives) and both of us survived. The apparent viscosity of the water at depth (like swimming through honey) doesn’t surprise me any more, and I know not to over-exert. My buoyancy has improved greatly and I don’t get panicky when I have to inject several squirts of air into my BCD to slow my descent.

Deep dives are awesome. It’s incredible to see the colours come to life when you shine a torch on things, or fire off a camera flash. It’s also thrilling to be able to explore a part of the ocean that is completely inaccessible in the normal course of things.

I also love safety stops. I love floating in midwater, seeing everyone’s bubbles around me, and feeling like an astronaut. We did a dive on the SAS Transvaal in incredibly visibility, and this video Tony took on the safety stop captures the feeling of weightlessness and space.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-raFP0oP3A&w=540]

The only frustration to me is how short the dives are. Because of the increased pressure at depth, you breathe a LOT more air out of your cylinder with each breath than you do on a shallow dive. At 40 metres, each breath consumes five times more air than at the surface. You also have to watch your dive time to avoid hitting the RDP limits at depth. A Nitrox course comes in handy here… But it seems that practice, and improved diving technique, are the key elements to improving air consumption, dive time and enjoyment of the whole experience.

The theory aspect of the course covers dive techniques related to drift and wall dives, decompression sickness and how to avoid it, safety stops and one or two other matters such as photography at depth. The skills required on the dives mainly relate to safety stops, different types of ascent and descent (with and without a reference line), and a little bit of navigation. It gives me great confidence to know that I am now certified to 40 metres, although, as the manual points out, 30 metres seems to be the “optimum depth” for the kind of scuba diving I enjoy.

Diving at the Two Oceans Aquarium

For Tony’s birthday in June we spent a Sunday morning at the Two Oceans Aquarium at the Waterfront, diving in the I&J Predator Exhibit and in the Kelp Forest Exhibit. These were two of the best dives I’ve ever done. You need an Open Water or equivalent qualification for the predator tank, though I think you can do a (expensive?) DSD there too. For the kelp forest you need an Advanced qualification, as even though it’s only 6 metres deep, it’s very surgy.

On both these dives, you are on view to the public. It’s fun to wave at the kids through the windows of the displays. They are very excited to see real live SCUBA DIVERS in the water with all the fish. Needless to say, the scuba divers were very excited to be there!

Youtube videos for both dives can be found here.

Kelp Forest Exhibit

We started in the kelp forest – you wind your way up to the roof of the aquarium and drop into the water off a small wooden platform. This exhibit completely is open to the air, since it’s comprised of vegetation and sea creatures found in Cape waters, and because kelp loves sunlight. Kelp also likes water movement, so there are a variety of devices to keep the water moving – dump buckets, a plunger, and some pumps. This makes it quite choppy on the surface and quite surgy below. (Fascinating fact: since kelp cleans the waste products – such as ammonia – out of the seawater by filtering it, a lot of the aquarium’s water is passed through the kelp tank on its way to other exhibits.)

The exhibit has live kelp that is actually growing, which is quite an achievement, but you’re not supposed to hang onto it the way I sometimes do in the open ocean! The tank is packed to the brim with white steenbras (my absolute favourite), red stumpnose, galjoen, zebra, roman, shysharks, fransmadam, and even a gully shark if you can spot him. The fish are huge, many of them much larger than any I’ve seen in the ocean. I was extremely fortunate to be allowed to feed them – I was given a small bag of squid pieces and sardines, and the fish gathered around me as I knelt on the bottom. It was wonderful, so busy and colourful. They weren’t shy, bumping into my legs and BCD once they’d realised I had lunch with me. There’s a hilarious finger-biting episode at around 2:45 minutes in this video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kePTwljhsyo&w=540]

The water is cold, and the tank isn’t actually very big. There are nice swim throughs between the rocks (made of fibreglass) and the kelp. The visibility isn’t perfect as the water is so highly aerated, and there are little bubbles of air everywhere. But it’s a thrilling dive and a very rare opportunity to get so close to so many beautiful fish.

Dive date: 6 June 2010

Air temperature: 18 degrees

Water temperature: 14 degrees

Maximum depth: 5.7 metres

Visibility: 10 metres

Dive duration: 27 minutes

I&J Predator Exhibit

The second dive we did was in the predator tank, which is a lot warmer than the kelp forest. On this dive, the Divemaster was armed with a piece of broomstick to “guide” the sharks away if they were to bother us. There are five ragged toothed sharks in the exhibit, none more than two and a half metres long. I think they’re all female. They cruise round and round in circles, looking completely awesome. I spent a long time just sitting on the floor of the tank watching them.

The other magnificent inhabitants of this tank are the sting rays. There’s Olive, a giant (and I mean GIANT) short-tailed sting ray like we see at Long Beach and Miller’s Point in summer, and a whole host of small (the sort of size that makes you want to take them home as pets) devil rays. Tony spent a significant part of the dive (while I was sitting watching sharks) chasing tiny rays around with his camera set on video.

In the corner of the tank we met the loggerhead turtle. She was lying next to a water vent, with her head in the corner. I was allowed to touch her on her neck (it felt really soft, and I felt lucky). I wasn’t convinced that she was a happy girl – she looked kind of depressed. Our DM said she gets more active when the water temperature increases, and sure enough I saw her swimming happily past the glass in the predator tank two weeks ago, when I went for my Saturday morning training at the aquarium.

The tank also contains musselcrackers, garrick, yellowtail, and (at the moment, but not when we dived in it) the remains of a sardine baitball.

The only moment when I got a bit of a fright was when we were surfacing against the rocks in the middle of the tank, and I omitted to look where I was going: straight into the path of a raggie. And sharks don’t generally get out of the way! Fortunately our DM had seen me behaving like a space cadet and “guided” the shark off to the side (since I wasn’t able to interrupt my ascent quickly enough).

Dive date: 6 June 2010

Air temperature: 16 degrees

Water temperature: 18 degrees

Maximum depth: 5 metres

Visibility: 25 metres

Dive duration: 35 minutes

Exploring: Sunny Cove

Tony has been wanting to dive Sunny Cove practically since he first set foot in Cape Town, having read in an old book on South African dive spots (The Dive Sites of South Africa – Anton Koornhof) that seahorses had been found there in the sea grass. Tony loves seahorses.

I put my foot down, repeatedly, until it was the dead of winter and the Sharkspotters website told me that not a single great white had been seen patrolling the coast for a couple of months. Sunny Cove is at the end of Jagger Walk, the catwalk that runs along the western edge of Fish Hoek Bay. It’s the site of at least one fatal munching by a great white, and I didn’t want to take any chances.

Sunny Cove railway station — View from the bridge over the railway line towards the dive site

It’s a shore entry, and we parked on the road at the bottom of the steps over the railway line. It’s quite a strenuous walk over the bridge with all your kit on. We spent a while figuring out where to get in – you have to clamber over some rocks, and make your way through dense kelp before getting to a clear spot. Once we decided where to get in, we were glad to be wearing thick wetsuits, otherwise we would have been scraped and scratched quite liberally! There is a huge submerged concrete block just where we got in – at first I tried to swim over it, but realised it was in only a few centimetres of water, and made my way around it. (Fortunately there was no one on the shore with a camera!) Cape Town shore diving is hard on your kit.

Sunny Cove — Our entry point is on the far left, almost out of the photo, where the straight piece of rock sticks out.

The actual dive site is aptly named. The sun streams in through the kelp, and the sea floor looks a lot like Shark Alley near Pyramid Rock – lots and lots of urchins, with pink-encrusted rock formations. We saw a little bit of sea grass, and spent a lot of time examining it for signs of life, but didn’t even find a pipe fish, let alone seahorses! There’s a lot of invertebrate life on the rocks – feather stars, brittle stars, abalone – and we saw quite a few fish.

We did see the deep channel that the sharks probably use to get in and out of Fish Hoek Bay. We were hoping to spot the beacon that records movements by tagged sharks past Sunny Cove, but no luck there. We did not explore much to the south of our entry point – that’s on the to do list (along with more sea horse hunting) for another shark-free day.

Verdict: Shallow, easy dive but a fairly tricky entry and exit. Infrequently dived, so rather more lush and unspoiled than busier sites. Videos of our dive are here and here.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaxvdFG4Fdg&w=540]

Dive date: 4 July 2010

Air temperature: 21 degrees

Water temperature: 13 degrees

Maximum depth: 10 metres

Visibility: 6 metres

Dive duration: 32 minutes