Our World – Underwater Scholarship Society in North America

I’m in Homer!  Homer, Alaska, that is.  I’ll be volunteering with these guys for the next few weeks:

Kachemak Bay Research Reserve

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The drawing above was illustrated by Catie Bursch, one of Kachemak Bay Research Reserve’s Marine Educators.  Today Catie and I went on an excursion looking for materials for the new exhibit at the Islands and Oceans Center where KBRR is housed.   Alaska is amazing!  I just saw a moose outside the window, I kid you not.

I’ll be working with Angela Doroff, helping with her research on kelp forest distribution and sea otter diet.  More to come!

Okay.  So it’s my last day in South Africa (boo), but at least we made it a red letter one: I dove today with Mark Addison of Blue Wilderness, and it was AMAZING.  To tick off the list, we started the day swimming with dolphins, then dove down to Cathedral Cave and visited the ragged-toothed sharks, then dove in with black-tipped reef sharks and tiger sharks, and then ended the day by, I am not making this up, swimming with a 7-meter whale shark.   This was all in less than 5 hours.  Please, click on the link below to take you to where the video from today is hosted (it’s 45 seconds and only shows tigers, black-tips and the whale shark, but you’ll get the gyst).  SO INCREDIBLE!  Thank you to everyone who made South Africa possible for me: Tom Peschak, Steve Benjamin & family, Mark & Gail Addison, Ian & Sharon McCallum, Vertrees Malherbe, and Lauren De Vos.

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Link to video from February 23, 2010

I’ve just arrived here in Rocky Bay, outside of Durban, South Africa,  to dive with Mark and Gail Addison of Blue Wilderness.  Mark and Gail have been running this unique marine ecotourism operation for 15 years, and the pioneering efforts they’ve made in support of the natural history of the coast for filming, photography and science has allowed them to provide these opportunities to recreational divers and marine enthusiasts (Mark Addison, www.bluewilderness.co.za).  The picture below is of Olivia “OJ” Symcox, South African icon for marine conservation, freediving with tiger sharks.  Wish me luck, I’ll be out there tomorrow!  I absolutely can’t wait!

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Olivia Symcox freediving with tiger sharks and Blue Wilderness. Photo copyright Mark Addison.

Steve Benjamin (Animal Ocean) has been helping me improve my freediving skills — when we went out on the boat today, I was able to dive down to about 13 meters, where these catsharks were aggregating.  Catsharks are beautiful, and later that day we found one on the sand that was no bigger than Steve’s little finger.  That one must have been very, very freshly hatched, and it was a remarkable find.

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Today the swell was up, so Steve Benjamin (Animal Ocean) and I took a group of professional photographers out chasing the big wave surfers at Sunset Reef, a surf spot here in Cape Town with a reputation almost as deadly as Dungeons.  We were out there for half the day, and I was absolutely blown away what these guys can do on the water.  Below is a picture by Jean Tresfon — the surfer is Sean Holmes, one of South Africa’s finest big-wave surfers.

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The waves were unbelievable.  Browse below if will, and try and imagine riding down the face of one of these.  Also out there today were Mike Baleta, Simon Lowe, Dave Smith and Mickey Dufus.

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Simon Lowe

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For the past three days (Feb. 6-9), I’ve had the privilege of accompanying Thomas Peschak, Chief Photographer for the Save Our Seas Foundation, on an underwater photo shoot here in Cape Town.  We’ve been out every day on Steve Benjamin’s Animal Oceans boat, and it’s been amazing to watch such a high-calibre photographer at work.  Thomas is also a tremendous advocate for shark conservation and a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers;  I would not have been able to come to South Africa if it weren’t for his help in finding experiences in South Africa for me on my scholarship.

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On February 5th, after another dive with the seven gill sharks (or cowsharks, as they’re called here) off of Miller’s Point, Steve Benjamin (Animal Ocean) took me up to Cape Point at the Cape of Good Hope, the most south-western point of Africa.  Although it’s not the tip of Africa, it’s definitely the photogenic tip of Africa, and Steve and I had a good time taking pictures and hiking up to the new lighthouse.  We saw ostriches and baboons as well!

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In the afternoon, we toured the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, which are absolutely stunning.  So much botanical knowledge in one place, it was mind-boggling and academically very inspiring — but to those friends who are all-too-familiar with my vocational ADD,  I’m happy to report that despite the amazing visit I’m still planning on studying marine biology & conservation, not botany.  Although I do have my sights set on marine plants.

February 3rd was the day that Steve Benjamin (Animal Ocean) and I went up into the mountains to meet Jeremy Sheldon, Ph.D. student at the University of Cape Town.  Jeremy is doing his Ph.D. thesis on the streams and rivers of the Bain’s Kloof region, in the mountains Northeast of the Cape.  He’s comparing the ecology of streams that have been invaded with trout (100 years ago they were brought over and introduced for game fishing) to that of those streams and rivers where trout haven’t infiltrated.

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A gorgeous, gorgeous day of fieldwork in a beautiful place.  I’m now seriously considering studying river otters along with sea otters.

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What an amazing day February 2nd was.   I’ll take you through the pictures below and explain the chronology that way.

I tagged along with Steve Benjamin (Animal Ocean) on a dive charter to dive with a natural aggregation of seven-gill sharks, or cowsharks (as they’re called in Cape Town) just past Miller’s Point near Simons Town.  It’s an unbelievable spot, as the cowsharks are gathered there in significant numbers and they’re VERY curious… not at all shy of divers.  It was fantastic!  We had at least 7 sharks around us at any one time, and we reckon we saw about 20 total.

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After the cowsharks, we stopped at the boat ramp at Millers Point to see the snoek boats coming in.  The picture below is of a man counting the snoeks as he tosses them in a bucky to be carried to market.

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Then we stopped by Muizenburg beach, and were just in time to see the Treknet fishermen bringing in a fresh catch of yellowtail kingfish!  This type of fishing is a bit different from your average industrial trawler or purse-seiner…the whole community gets out on the beach to help pitch the nets.  It was fun to watch.  Does anyone know any more about this type of fishing, how impactful it is and how long it’s been in practice?  I’m having difficulty finding information on it, even locally.

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We left Muizenburg Beach and drove up Boyes Drive to the overlook of Muizenburg in False Bay.  From there, you can see Seal Island (remember that AWESOME series in Planet Earth that shows great white sharks breaching?  That’s Seal Island), as well as the entire stretch of Muizenberg Beach.  To our unbelievable luck, the Shark Spotter on duty, (her name is Vivian) spotted  a great white just moments after we arrived!

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It was unbelievable.   I’ve shown the picture below fully scaled out and then zoomed in to give you an idea of perspective – the shark was about 2.5m-3m long.  The Shark Spotter program is a wonderful alternative to shark nets (which can be found all along the eastern beaches of South Africa, in Durban).  Shark nets “work” because they kill everything in their path, shark and fish and dolphin and seal alike.  The Shark Spotter program works, and eliminates the unnecessary slaughter that shark nets unleash.

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And that was (most of) our day!  It was banner.  The days have been packed, and I’m still catching up – more to come.

Steven Benjamin (my Cape Town guide and owner of Animal Ocean) and I returned from Dassen Island on Sunday, March 31st.  On Monday, Steve took me along on one of his dive charters to Duiker Island, home of a very friendly colony of Cape fur seals.

A Cape fur seal leaps near Duiker Island, Cape Town.

They were magic to dive with, but seals always make me feel like an absolute robot underwater.  After the dive, Steve took us snorkeling to a little rocky beach just beyond the point of Hout Bay Harbor, because he wanted to show us the site of an abalone poaching operations.  The picture below shows the pile of empty abalone shells we found there.

A pile of poached and scraped abalone shells.

What happens is, abalone divers go outside the harbor in little rubber duck boats, collect the abalone and bring them to this beach, which is hidden from sight and around the point from Haut Bay slipway.  The poachers unload their illegally harvested abalone on the beach, stacked up in piles, before taking their now empty boats back to the slipways of Hout Bay Harbor, which are monitored for illegal abalone fishing.  Then the poachers hike over the point down to the beach, and carry the illegal harvest of abalone meat overland, thereby avoiding getting caught.  It’s quite a racket.