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Just Scuba Blog
Why is our water turning red?
If you looked out onto the water on Thursday, 8 April, you would have seen a strange natural occurrence. A massive red tide has entered our waters.
If you’ve never seen this happening, you would probably have thought that this was a frightening, or at the very least, a peculiar occurrence. But there is an excellent reason why this is happening.
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Diverse Diving in False Bay
Diving in False Bay offers a large variety of different dives which makes this such a sought-after destination.
Location:
False Bay is a body of water in the Atlantic Ocean between the mountainous Cape Peninsula and the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the extreme south-west of South Africa. The mouth of the bay faces south and is demarcated by Cape Point to the west and Cape Hangklip to the east.
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Kelp Forests of South Africa
South Africa has one of the biggest kelp forests in the world. Kelp is a marine algae and not a true plant and species range from shorter growing “bottom kelp” to much taller species. This ecosystem serves as food and shelter for many marine species and is one of the richest habitats on earth. The canopy of these forests can be seen from the shore on the surface of the water and looks like a shiny green mass but once you go below the surface an enchanting new world opens up.
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The neglected diversity:
Blood Parasites of Catsharks off the Western Cape
Who would have thought that marine research, and specifically research on elasmobranchs (Elasmobranchii is a subclass of Chondrichthyes or cartilaginous fish, including the sharks and the rays, skates, and sawfish), would be one of the major areas of expertise in an inland university? Over the past three years, researchers at the NWU Potchefstroom campus, along with our collaborators at the South African Shark Conservancy (SASC) in Hermanus, have been doing research on elasmobranchs to determine ecotoxicity and their parasite diversity.
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Read more: Blood Parasites of Catsharks off the Western Cape
Diving Protea Banks
If you want to dive with sharks, this is the place. We saw 8 different species of sharks, Scalloped Hammerheads, Great Hammerheads, Raggies, Tiger, Zambezis, Black Tips, Duskies and Giant Guitar sharks in our short time we spent here.
Protea Banks is situated 7.5km out to sea from Shelly Beach on the East Coast of South Africa. The reef lies at a depth of between 27 and 40 meters. It is about 6km long and 800m wide. Essentially a fossilized sandbank which comes up from 60m.
“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
― Helen Keller
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In the water with a Great White Shark
Shark behavior and tips on how to behave when you find yourself in the water with a shark
A while back we did a dive trip to Tofo, Mozambique. On our 4th dive of the trip, we were just about to end our dive on a dive site named Sherwood Forest when a Great White shark came to greet us. We were absolutely awe-struck coming face to face with this magnificent animal. She was very inquisitive and not skittish at all and circled us as we slowly started making our way to our safety stop. She kept moving just out of sight and then coming closer again while circling us. The visibility was not great that day. We did not feel threatened at all as the shark seemed calm and not overly inquisitive.
We fear what we do not understand.
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8 Handy Tips for Improving your Underwater Photography
We have made a handy list of tips for you to improve your underwater photography skills.
1. Keep Still
Try to keep your camera as still as possible in order to prevent camera shake. The underwater environment can sometimes make this a big challenge and even impossible in surge or strong currents. Using a faster shutter speed will also help, but you are not always able to set the shutter speed too high without getting a photo that is too dark. To compensate for this, you can bump up your ISO to lighten up your image.
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Read more: 8 Handy Tips for Improving your Underwater Photography
6 Fascinating Sea Animals
Marine animals are probably the most interesting but the least known. So we made a list of some of our favourite sea creatures with interesting facts about them. All of these can be found around the South African coast.
1. Ragged-tooth Shark
The Ragged-tooth shark or as it is fondly called 'Raggie', has unmistakable 'ragged' teeth giving these docile sharks a fearsome appearance. They are however a slow-moving shark with no confirmed human fatalities.
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Octopus Roundup: Top Five Favorites
Octopus are one of the ocean’s most intelligent animals, and while it’s hard to pick favorites, here are the five species we most want to see on a dive.
Known as one of the most intelligent animals in the ocean, many factors make octopus so intriguing, including their camouflage skills, their multiple hearts, their locomotion technique, and their use of tools (in the case of the coconut octopus). We don’t like to pick favorites, but here are the five octopus species we’d most like to see on a dive.
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Being a surfer and sharing the water with sharks
Shark illustration by Caitlin Judge
So, I’m sure most of us have seen ‘that shark video’ by now which has gone viral. Drone footage showing an encounter with a respectably sized white shark here in Plettenberg Bay.
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Meet the Indian Ocean's first pygmy seahorse - which was discovered in KZN
- The tiny and beautiful Sodwana pygmy seahorse is one of its kind to be found in Africa and for that matter the Indian Ocean.
- It now has a scientific name.
- Smaller than a R1 coin, the rare seahorse was only discovered in 2017.
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Mafia Island Tranquility
Going to Mafia Island was a spur of the moment decision and one of the best we’ve made. We were actually going to Malawi but decided to go to Tanzania as an add-on to our Malawi trip since it was just a little bit extra to get there from Malawi.
Mafia Island ("Chole Shamba") is an island in Tanzania. The name "Mafia" derives from the Arabic morfiyeh, meaning "group" or "archipelago", or from the Swahili mahali pa afya, meaning "a healthy dwelling-place".
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