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Underwater Photographer Madelein Wolfaardt
Since I can remember my main interests have been wildlife photography, nature conservation and marine biology. I used to collect wildlife images from magazines and buy posters of big cats, the walls in my room were covered.
I’m originally from Johannesburg. Life tends to take you on a journey with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, and I very happily ended up living in Gordon’s Bay, Cape Town with my husband, Marius. This gave us the opportunity to explore our shared passion for the ocean and diving.
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Here are 6 easy ways to get to know the underwater world.
When you start exploring underwater and everything is new to you, how do you even start to get to know the vast number of underwater animals and plants? Don’t worry, it’s not complicated. In this article, I will show you six easy and practical ways to start familiarizing yourself with the marine environment.
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Do you want to make scuba diving your career? Then you're probably looking for a Dive Center to get you there. Here is why it's super beneficial to be trained in Cape Town waters with Just Africa Scuba.
Here are 10 Reasons to Become an Instructor in Cape Town.
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Read more: Why Do Your Dive Instructors Course in Cape Town?
Many people wonder about the differences between scuba and snorkel. Here are five things to consider when comparing the two. Hopefully, this will help you make a decision on which one you would like to explore first.
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Dive Travel
Here are 8 well-known shipwrecks around St Helena Island that can be explored by scuba divers and some of them are also accessible to snorkellers being in shallow water.
Saint Helena Island is a remote and captivating destination located in the South Atlantic Ocean.
Known for its stunning natural beauty and historical significance, with its dramatic cliffs and lush valleys, Saint Helena provides a picturesque setting for outdoor exploration and adventure. The island’s location provides opportunities for unforgettable marine wildlife encounters.
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Getting to know the underwater world has been, and still is, one of my favourite things. When you start your journey of free diving or scuba diving, you’re introduced to a new alien world. There's a multitude of unknown creatures all around. Everything seems weird and wonderful, and you feel like you're discovering new animals on every dive. This is always exciting. In this article, I make use of examples from our local marine life in False Bay, Cape Town.
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Our program includes all the scuba dive courses taking you from novice to a PADI Pro. You will learn practical work skills like gear maintenance, compressor operator, retail, customer service, professionalism, computer skills, and marketing & sales. All of this is integrated with our special Life Skills Courses which promote personal development and include: communication, conflict, a growth mindset, time management, self-awareness, and more.
Meet Erin
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Read more: Why Join the Just Africa Scuba Career Development Program?
Want to make the ocean your office?
In this article, you will see how to do that... Becoming a PADI Scuba Instructor can be done in a year's time or less with our Career Development Program. We will commit our time, expertise and resources in order for you to become the best Instructor possible. Below I will show you the steps to take from an absolute novice to becoming a professional.
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South Africa Travel
Gordon’s Bay is a charming naval town nestled against the Hottentots Holland Mountains. It’s a 45min drive from Cape Town CBD and a 40min drive from Stellenbosch in the Cape Winelands district. Situated on the eastern side of False Bay, the largest bay in South Africa.
False Bay faces southward and is almost 1,000 km2 in size, bounded by the Cape Peninsula to the west and Cape Hangklip to the east. Conditions range from cold, seasonal upwellings from South Africa’s southwest coast to periodic warm-water intrusions from the Agulhas Current system off the southeast coast, causing unique conditions which create amazing biological diversity. The nutrient-rich water sustains the abundant reef life as well as the kelp forest ecosystems found here.
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So, you are new to diving and interested in finding out what it takes to become a certified Scuba Diver? The underwater world is a magical and alluring place. In this article, we will look at the steps to take to become a scuba diver.
Becoming a scuba diver can be life-changing as you enter into this whole new world. Diving can go from easy to challenging and everything in between. Here’s how it works and what you need to do to become a scuba diver.
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This is a question many divers ask: "Should I spend money on buying my own scuba equipment or, should I continue to rent gear each time I go for a dive?" If you’re on the fence about buying new gear, you can start by doing a cost estimate of renting gear for the amount of diving you plan to do in the next year and compare that to buying your own. Here are a few other things to keep in mind when deciding.
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Never been to Egypt and dived the Red Sea? You are missing out, this trip will keep you coming back for more.
The Red Sea has some of the warmest and clearest water in the world with pristine reefs and historic shipwrecks. Here are 10 reasons why this is a dive experience not to be missed.
Info about our next trip HERE
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Cape Town boasts many magnificent features for divers to explore. There are beautiful dive sites that can be reached by boat, but unlike many other places around the world, that’s not the only way to dive in Cape Town. Our shore dives are something spectacular in their own right.
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and why they are Important
This is definitely a proven way to help protect our wonderful ocean and marine life for the benefit of people and nature.
What is a Marine Protected Area?
Like a nature reserve but in the ocean, it is an area of coastline or ocean that is specially protected with limits put into place in these specific areas.
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A major new study re-assessing the IUCN Red List status for all sharks, rays and chimaeras has found that more than one-third of species from these groups are now at risk of extinction from overfishing.
The report, published on 6 September in the online journal Current Biology, is the conclusion of the IUCN's Global Shark Trends project, from which highlights published earlier in March 2021 revealed that 39 species had been reclassified as 'Critically Endangered', 'Endangered', and 'Vulnerable to Extinction', since the last assessment report, published in 2014.
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Read more: Number of Endangered Shark and Ray Species Triples Since 2014
Featuring Women in Diving
Nicolene Olckers tells us about her interesting career as a photographer and dive professional with some great advice for people considering a career in diving.
How I got started in scuba diving
I must admit, I am a bit of an adrenaline junky. Over the years I have taken on the usual suspects, skydiving, bungee jumping, adventure motorcycling scuba diving, and open water swimming.
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Featuring Women in Diving
I was super excited to do my scuba course. After hearing and seeing all the amazing experiences that others had underwater, I couldn't wait to start my journey.
The Open Water Diver Course requires a medical check-up. I didn't think much of it, it's just standard procedure. The doctor heard a noise in my heart and declared me unfit to dive. He told me that just a week before there was a case where he heard the same noise in another patient, and she ended up being diagnosed with PFO (Patent Foramen Ovale). This means that there is a small opening between the two upper chambers of the heart. The opening normally closes soon after birth, but in some people, it doesn't. This opening makes it dangerous to dive as it cannot handle the pressure, and can cause an air embolism.
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Being a great underwater photographer is not just about the pictures you take, but also about how you go about getting them.
After making some rookie mistakes myself, I decided long ago that I never wanted to be ‘that photographer’. Therefore, I made these rules to dive by.
What do I mean by 'that photographer'?
Well, we have had some really bad experiences on dives with underwater photographers. This is by no means all of them, after all, I am one too.
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Sea urchins are echinoderms in the class Echinoidea. The name Echinoderm came from Greek. “Echinos” means ‘’Spiny” and “Derma” means “skin”. Some marine animals that are classified as echinoderms are sea cucumbers, sea stars or starfish, sand dollars, and sea urchins. Sea Urchins are like the porcupines of the sea and get their name from an Old English word for the spiny hedgehog.
Sea urchins inhabit all oceans and can be found from the shallows to 5000 meters deep, there are around 950 species.
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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
- Kelp Forests of South Africa
- Blood Parasites of Catsharks off the Western Cape
- Diving Protea Banks
- In the water with a Great White Shark
- 8 Handy Tips for Improving your Underwater Photography
- 6 Fascinating Sea Animals
- Octopus Roundup: Top Five Favorites
- Being a surfer and sharing the water with sharks
- Meet the Indian Ocean's first pygmy seahorse
- Mafia Island Tranquility
- Weird & Wonderful Sea Slugs
- Underwater Photography is for anyone
- Scuba Diving in False Bay
St Helena Island Trip - 20 to 27 April 2024
Dive St Helena - R 25 500pp sharing
This destination is not just for scuba divers but for snorkelers, freedivers and non-divers as well, with numerous activities to do in between dives.
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