Sardine Run, South Africa Part 1
From the Durban Airport it’s about an hour south to Scottburgh and the Blue Dolphin Hotel. I stayed four nights and Crystal Divers, www.crystal-diver.co.az , was the dive company organized to take us to the dive sites. Eventually there were eleven and one quarter of us; she is the cutest most adorable 15-month old tour guide I’ve ever had. There may have been a plan but she still ran the show and was the second greatest attraction to the whole trip, a close second to the Sardine Run, the reason we all gathered here.
In the morning we normally joined up for an enormous Blue Marlin buffet breakfast then got organized for the day of two dives. A typical day was eat, go get sorted, head to the equipment room where we would get into wet suits and booties, hop in the back of a truck with benches and drive down to the beach followed by the Crystal Divers boat and Captai all ending up on the beach across the river just below the hotel. The Captain would slide the boat off the trailer on the beach at the water’s edge and we would push on the bow until it pointed into the on coming waves. After a timely moment waiting for the right amount of shore break we’d push the boat out over the shallow sand bars until the props could be dropped. The skipper would get on boat followed by the admirable ladies and then the rest of us would get on over the inflatable rails/seats. For the timely rough ride through the waves we wore life jackets and put our feet in straps attached to the deck of the boat and hung on. On numerous occasions the boat would launch off the backside of a wave and splash down out further to sea. It was definitely part of the adventure.
We dove our first two dives at Raggie Cave instead of changing sites because this is where the sharks were and it was worth both dives. The topography is a submerged sand dune that eventually grew soft and hard corals, grasses, and is ideal for Nudibranch, Lobster/or really big shrimp, and a plethora of fish varieties including Scorpion and Stonefish. It is protected waters but not all the waters in the area are protected.
I was hearing stories from the dive guides and others in the business like our boat captain saying that the Chinese are trawling illegally off shore and one year a boat was caught and brought in to the harbor and searched. Nothing was found, the boat was clean; it was then considered a decoy for other fishing vessels taking away mass swaths of aquatic life indiscriminately. A while later another boat was stopped and brought into the harbor where they found millions of dollars worth of fish product in the ship holds. The South African government fined them 20,000 Rand, about 1,300 USD and they were released. Corruption is not cool but rampant down here. Where’s a man like Mandela when a country can really use him and his equality for all stance. Today, down here in South Africa the government is primarily black and unfair with an almost reverse discrimination policy. Job hiring isn’t necessarily due to college degrees or qualifications to do a job well and efficiently. I don’t necessarily blame them but the economy and the people will all suffer as a whole from such biased activities. Job order is black women, white women, black men, white men, and everybody else is after that. For instance, my taxi driver has a college education and he and his wife both have menial jobs because he’s over qualified for most of the jobs but can’t possibly get the one he’s trained for. He and his wife both work to raise their family while unqualified civilians get jobs they are not necessarily trained or experienced to take nor the wages that come with it. Basically the President of South Africa took 300 million Rand from the people, reclaimed ranch lands and farms and pays himself more than President Obama of the United States. He recently bought Land Rovers for each of his seven wives. My question is why would a man want to put himself through seven wives. Maybe he’s hoping they’ll all drive away. Just kidding/not. In any case, about 15 years ago there was a change of power in South Africa. People believed in the party it felt secure they voted in favor. People have died for it and against it, so maybe there are some transitional shock waves still resonating under the surface. As far as I know it’s still open for foreign investment but please keep it low key and stay with the rhythm of the people. Live music is always a plus.
On our second day of diving we went to a place called Cathedral or Church or the ‘Holy Place’ where we could kneel in the sand outside of a circular coral depression where the sharks hide out. There is a beautiful stone and coral arch at the entrance, a swim through if you will, a Cathedral entrance, really cool. I had my first head on encounter with a shark there. I was still coming along to get to the Cathedral after most everyone else had already arrived. I was busy watching other sharks and a turtle in the area where I had dropped down to the shoal. I entered a rock walled corridor leading to the cathedral as the other divers came to the entrance and a Raggie popped out of the Cathedral entryway and it came casually toward me at a lower depth but not by much lower. We kept swimming towards each other while I fumbled with my camera. The shark went underneath me by inches and I took a really clear photo of the inside of my lens cap, two actually, and the shark was gone.
After returning to shore to exchange tanks and grab a bite to eat and a cup of tea we launched back through the waves again and ended up diving the entire length of the shoal with a bit of current and a surge. On our ascent out of the water an oceanic black tip was spotted curiously swimming toward one of our group who had already surfaced with his dive buddy. It turned away before getting too close. The reason the shark was curious is because the diver was kicking his fins on the surface in and out of the water and the slapping fin sound attracts sharks, it sounds like a fish in distress.
All our dives finished up in the early afternoon and we had a late lunch at the hotel. The meals were included in the overall cost so you just had to pick something off the menu and make a cup of tea. The food was well prepared and the staff at the Blue Marlin did everything in their power to help and make our stay as pleasant and relaxing as possible. Crystal Divers staff treated us the same way; very excited to be diving and showing people the wonders of the nearby South African coast line. We would meet up and have a beer or a glass of wine around 530 when there would be a general gathering for up coming events or hang around a bon fire and listen to one of the founders of Shark Guardian, www.sharkgaurdian.com, talk about sharks in general with specifics monitoring of their decline in population or explain what Hollywood has indirectly done to the shark population via hype and scare tactics through sensational movies. The shark is a misunderstood animal and we should have an open mind. The real point I take with me now from Brendon is the simple fact that sharks have been around for millions of years without changing much.
Shark Guardian is a UK Charity that was founded by Brendon Sing originally from South Africa. Shark Guardian conducts educational presentations, conservation workshops to over 25,000 people every year – mostly school students. They are also involved with several shark and marine citizen science research projects including the eShark Project (eoceans.org), and work with several researchers and scientists in the top of their field. Working with other organizations and NGOs, Shark Guardian reduces the demand for, sales, retail and transportation of shark related products worldwide.
Sharks have lived through naturally occurring cataclysmic disasters and survived until we came along and over populated the lands with people and bizarre mystic medicinal needs including Shark fin soup, Manta Ray gills, Rhino Horn, Yatze—gumba, the caterpillar head fungus found at a particular altitude in North-Western Nepal. It’s a ‘longevity’ and ‘endurance’, a concoction you drink usually in tea but also in the wine, caterpillar included. You’re supposed to keep drinking Yatze-gumba which really turns up the demand and keeps it up. There is numerous other such nonsense remedies supposedly good for the ‘yang’ (Sexual stamina). I’m not sure why the Chinese are so interested in MORE stamina considering our over population problem as a planet that few can see for face value. And then there’s an economy to think of; heaven forbid or Allah forbid we make a change for the planet’s health. We’ll all just die along with it, except it will most likely rejuvenate and evolve in oh say a million years.
Brendon pointed out ways we could all help, data collection being one of the most effective means. When ANYONE goes diving or snorkeling and they see a shark or photograph a shark they can enter the data into a database that is public access available. www.eocean.org. He also pointed out it’s also important to enter the data that you DIDN’T see a shark or turtle or other animals. The negative tells as much of the story as the finding of an animal, especially if you are expecting to see them and you strike out, that’s important data.
Our last dive the next day was an epic shark dive without a cage. After Hollywood destroyed our notion of the sea and the animals in it, we ended up fearing the sea, the other two-thirds of the planet. ‘JAWS’ was a big movie back in the day and I remember when it came out. Fishing for sharks, killing large sharks became a fad and went viral. The fear of sharks kept generations on to the beach and not really in the water and today we still don’t know much about the sea. There are statistics out there that claim that more people die of bee stings, snake bites, car accidents, and of course war than any sharks. I now believe the stats as true. Not all sharks are terribly aggressive, some are for sure; like the Bull Shark, the Great White, the Brown - aka Zambezi, some migrate along the coastal waters probably following a food source. But not all are dangerous and we treat them indiscriminately as a whole. Our short sightedness is the real problem.
We tried to get up early and eat breakfast and get out in the water but one thing after another held us back. No big deal. We got out to the grounds and with the bait ball full of thawed baitfish, something oily in the food chain that would scent the water and leave a trail leading to us, we dropped it where we had been diving in the past to bring the sharks up. By the time we got to the dive site there were already three other boats there and we waited for them to go away and have the station that was already baited and we’d just continued the process and use it to our advantage.
Jumping into Shark infested waters is not exactly the most comfortable of feelings because I too have been brainwashed to think differently about them. I’ve dived with sharks but not actually trying to attract them before jumping in the water. Once I was underwater and watched the action I settled into a comfortable understanding seeing it first hand. The sharks didn’t want us; we are as alien as MARS. Of course some will most certainly take a bite out of you but more than 80% of the people bitten survive because we are not considered a food source for the sharks and we taste horrible compared to a fish, their normal food source. Half way through our shark dive another group did drop a cage with people in it watching us and the sharks.
The sharks, big Grouper and lots of little fish concentrated their attention on the bait ball but the sharks did periodic fly-bys and carry on, many times coming towards us individually, circle, and head back to the bait ball where Miguel periodically pulled out mashed up fish bits and tossed them loosely around in the water. He was wearing my GoPro on his head so I have some really good footage up close and personal but the shots I took from 10 meters away are no less fun. Again, it changed my mind about sharks and the way we treat them. Sharks deserve respect not annihilation because the potential option of extinction would be a proper personal foul on all of us.
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A huge Thank You to Crystal Divers, Blue Marlin Hotel and most of all to Brendon and Liz for forming Shark Guardian and arranging the logistics of this trip to South Africa together and putting us in the right place at the right time.
Book sites for David Dagley:
Titles; ‘Cale Dixon and the Moguk Murders’, ‘White Bars’, ‘Women Of Cho’.
For more travel adventures go to my site listed below and click on a picture for a story and more pictures.
