Our World – Underwater Scholarship Society in North America

While Cape Town was an unforgettable experience, nothing could come close to the excitement of the Sardine Run.  Every year, cold currents push their way up the eastern coast of South Africa, bringing with them millions of sardines that typically reside in the southern waters of the country.  It’s unclear where the sardines end up, as they basically disappear once they pass Durban.  Nevertheless, for several weeks each year, shoals of sardines that can surpass twenty kilometers in length are found moving north along the Wild Coast.  Not surprisingly, the Indian Ocean empties its predators on this stretch of coastline, turning an annual migration into an absolute feeding frenzy.  To experience this unique event, I was hosted by the legendary Michael AW, founder of Ocean Geographic, and Sardine-Run guru Walter Bernardis, owner of African Watersports.

The thing about the Sardine Run is that it is incredibly inconsistent.  Some years it happens in late May, other years in June, and sometimes you won’t see a single sardine until July.  So you can understand why showing up for nine days and hoping for the best can turn into a bit of a crapshoot.  But, as you may have guessed by now, we were incredibly lucky.  In fact, Michael, a seasoned Sardine Run veteran, exclaimed that this was by far the best Run he had ever seen.

It’s important to understand just how incredible a natural event the Sardine Run really is.  There is nowhere else on the planet where anything even remotely similar occurs.  While millions of sardines are moving several hundred feet below the surface, similarly massive groups of common dolphins are arriving on the Wild Coast.  So-called superpods can be spotted moving in, thousands of dolphins strong and literally reaching as far as the eye can see.  As engineers of the famous bait balls, the dolphins are the workhorses of the Run.  They dive deep to reach the sardines, separating a ‘chunk’ and herding it to the surface.  These chunks can reach more than sixty feet in diameter; a solid, churning mass of sardines.  The dolphins periodically attack the bait ball from the sides and from below, taking advantage of the sardines’ natural schooling defense mechanism and forcing the ball to keep its shape.  When the bait ball is pinned against the surface, the gannets arrive.  Circling the ball from one hundred feet above, the gannets suddenly tuck their wings in and dive, making a colossal ‘thud’ as they hit the water.  As many as sixty gannets can hit the water per second, creating a machine-gun-like effect underwater and what Walter jokingly refers to as a white tornado above.  I had originally thought that a gannet’s dive was something done at random, but it’s the complete opposite; they seem to find their mark before they hit the water, snatching up a sardine seconds into their dive.  Even more incredible, if a gannet misses its mark, or isn’t satisfied with only a single sardine, it doesn’t have to get airborne again.  Watching these birds as they hunt underwater, flapping their wings almost as though they’re still flying, seemingly just as comfortable underwater as in the air, is one of the most unique and astounding things I’ve ever seen.

As if the dolphins and gannets aren’t enough, then come the sharks.  Diving down to the bottom of a bait ball for the first time can be a bit unnerving.  Dozens of silky, dusky and bronze whaler sharks can be found taking advantage of the dolphins’ hard work, skimming the sides of the bait ball or disappearing right into the thick of it.  As a casual observer of the sardine run, it’s best to stay outside of the bait ball, where a sudden flash of sardines provides warning that something bigger than you with lots of teeth and an open mouth is on its way out.  However, the sardines tend to have different plans.  They seem to recognize almost immediately that scuba divers, although loud and no doubt very strange, mean them no harm.  It’s not unusual to find yourself directly in the middle of a bait ball with no idea how you got there as the sardines take refuge around you.  This is not a good place to be.  While the sharks mean no harm to divers when there are thousands of sardines trapped right in front of them, it wouldn’t be hard for a shark to accidentally bump into a diver on its way through the ball.  In fact, last year an unlucky diver who had a shiny silver camera pushed up against his face in the middle of a bait ball had his nose bitten off; but accidents like this are rare.

So – dolphins are constantly attacking the bait ball from the sides and from below, gannets are hitting the water at sixty-birds-per-second, and sharks are going into a frenzy down below, leaping out of the water after particularly vigorous assaults.  Just when it seems like it could not possibly get any more exciting, a Bryde’s whale (pronounced Broodah’s) lunges from below, swallowing half the ball with an open mouth that could take on a school bus without any trouble.  With visibility reaching thirty feet only on the best of days, the only warning that a Bryde’s whale is emerging from the murky depths is a flash of sardines, easily mistaken for the usual shark or dolphin.  It quickly becomes apparent that this is neither a shark nor a dolphin as my peripheral vision is filled with a blue mass.  Each time a Bryde’s whale lunges through the sardine ball, as close as six inches from me, I tend to have two thoughts in quick succession.  The first is ‘how lucky am I that I wasn’t just swallowed, and how many times will my luck hold?’  The second is ‘oh shit’ as I look down to see its tail – as wide as a car is long – beating with a ferocity I’ve never seen before and with 90,000 pounds of muscle fueling each stroke.  Nevertheless, the Bryde’s whales always seem to slip by without inflicting so much as a bruise.  Hanging to the side of a bait ball sixty feet in diameter, watching dolphins scream through the sardines, sharks come flying towards me with open mouths, and 50-foot whales lunging just inches away from me so often it’s impossible to tell how many are actually here, I feel like I have truly experienced everything the Sardine Run has to offer.

But why am I here?  What is it about this experience that is educational and not simply exciting or entertaining?  How will the Sardine Run help me achieve my future goals of protecting the world’s oceans and how will the Sardine Run help change the way people live, help fix their bad habits that are destroying our natural places?  I’m here for the same reason that Michael is here, taking photos for the pages of Ocean Geographic, which will hopefully reach the hands of a businessman in Beijing, a farmer in Lima, or a CPA in Arkansas.  We’re here to capture a natural event so incredible that it’s impossible to ignore, an event so impressive that even those with no interest in the ocean will stop and say ‘Wow.’  We’re here to show the unadulterated glory of one of nature’s most extraordinary events to someone who would otherwise never know it even existed.  And now that they know it exists, they’re one step closer to caring that it’s still here tomorrow.

The first episode in the Underwater Updates series has arrived!  Please give me feedback!  Is it too slow, too boring, is my hair too long?  Tips and comments welcome!  Constructive criticism is preferred, of course..!  Click on the title to watch a higher resolution version.

Enjoy!

Special Thanks:

Steve Benjamin
animalocean.co.za/

The Great White House/Marine Dynamics
thegreatwhitehouse.co.za/

Dyer Island Conservation Trust
dict.org.za/

Marine Dynamics

www.sharkwatchsa.com

What an entirely unbelievable experience!  On Friday I had the privilege of diving with the most famous fish in the sea – the great white shark!  Gansbaai, three hours south of Cape Town, is arguably the great white shark diving capital of the world.  And it wouldn’t take much arguing.  Discovery Channel, Nat Geo, BBC’s Planet Earth – they all film their white shark footage there!  And with good reason – I saw FIFTEEN white sharks!  I was completely floored when I caught a glimpse of the first one in the water.  It’s been my dream to see one!  They’re the most incredible animals I’ve ever seen – despite their ferocious appearance they’re actually stunningly graceful.  I got tons of great footage in slow motion with my Light & Motion housing, and when you see their actions slowed down it adds a whole new depth to their appearance and the way they move.  I have to say it was over entirely too quickly – even though I was out on the boat for upwards of six hours!

What was just as great, if not better to see than the sharks themselves, was the way ecotourism functions in Gansbaai.  Ecotourism promises a lot of results – benefits to the environment and to communities associated with whatever the ‘eco’ is – but it seems that as often than not, it doesn’t deliver.  In fact, many times the only party that ‘ecotourism’ benefits is the tour operators themselves!  In Gansbaai, however, ecotourism is everything you could ever hope it to be!  I went diving with Marine Dynamics, one of the two dive operators out of The Great White House.  Closely associated with The Great White House is the Dyer Island Conservation Trust (DICT).  In fact, the Trust is funded entirely by charitable donations from several dive operations in Gansbaai – it’s independent of any governmental support.  DICT is involved in everything from penguin rehabilitation and artificial nest creation, to white shark research, to recycling and educational programs in the local communities, and local craftsmen and -women sell their souvenirs in the dive centers gift shop.  Every boat that goes out with tourists from The Great White House to dive with the white sharks has a marine biologist on board who is both responsible for educating the divers and also for collecting valuable data on the sharks that do come to the boat.  The data collection and resulting research is funded directly by the dive operators and DICT, establishing a perfect harmony between ecotourism, research and conservation!  Not to mention the fact that it would be impossible to afford to send out three boats daily simply to collect data!  The tourism industry funds both the Conservation Trust’s work and the shark research which results in better management and protection of the white sharks, along with a number of other conservation and education initiatives.  The situation in Gansbaai is the perfect example of how ecotourism should work – something I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite to this extent!

I had an excursion to Langebaan this weekend as well to help some UCT researchers collect sand sharks for a population study.  I’ll post some photos from that in my next entry!  Right now I’m in Durban and tomorrow I’ll be meeting up with the famous Michael Aw to head to Aliwal Shoal for some tiger shark diving before heading south to Mboyti for the sardine run!  I’m editing my Cape Town video and it’s getting close, so you shouldn’t have to wait long now to see the white shark footage!

The weather in Cape Town has not been conducive to diving!  There have been some absolutely massive storms in the mornings which have made the seas so rough that it would just be silly to try to go out in them.  Believe it or not, Cape Town actually got snow. Okay, the snow was only in the mountains outside of the city, but still – I never thought I’d go home talking about the snow capped peaks of South Africa!  Whilst trapped on shore I’ve been keeping myself busy, checking out the Two Oceans Aquarium, helping University of Cape Town researchers with some baboon data collection and visiting the Save Our Seas Foundation Shark Centre, which is doing so much to help protect great whites and other sharks in Cape Town and to improve public understanding of the importance of ocean ecosystems.  I’ve also done a bit of sightseeing in the evenings when the light becomes absolutely stunning, so I hope you enjoy these photos!

Two Oceans Aquarium

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It’s been an awesome couple of days, and I’m going to let the photos do most of the talking for this post!  We went out for a dive near Hout Bay with the Cape Fur Seals.  It was absolutely mental!  There were hundreds of seals sunning themselves on the rocks, and there must have been a hundred with us in the water!  They’re incredible playful and inquisitive, and they have absolutely no problem swimming up and gnawing on a camera light or a fin (or my head) to find out what exactly it is!  These are the same seals that are eaten by the great whites nearby at Seal Island all winter long, but the water in Hout Bay is too cold and too shallow for the great whites, and there’s way too much kelp for them to make their way in to where we were diving.  Good news for both the seals and for us!  Here are a few photos from the dives and a few photos that I took my sweet time posting (probably more relevant to the last blog entry).  So far the underwater shots are all freeze captures from my video footage, but I promise I’ll post some real underwater photos soon!  And I’ll also be posting videos soon enough!

Penguins

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Penguins in Simonstown