10 Aug 2009 - A Frame

This long weekend we decided to plan the dive for the Monday (woman's day). Dave, Shane and I got an early start for False Bay and arrived at Pisces for airfills with one small problem. Pisces were closed for renovations. This reminded me of the importance of having our gear all set up at home before any dive to avoid problems like this.
Not too much of a problem though, we nipped over the mountain to Scubashack, where they sorted us out with air quickly and friendly, thanks Scubashack!
The bay looked great when we initially saw it, after the air fills we noticed that it had already started to change a bit with more surface chop. There was some swell at A frame which made the entry and exit exciting.
The dive turned out beautiful, you forget about the wind and other surface conditions when under in 12m vis conditions. We swam through the cave and out along 120 degrees, around the big rock and back. Sizty minutes later we were back at the cave from the eastern side and decided to make our way home.
A total dive time of seventy one minutes was the result of good conditions and no one being in a hurry.
We saw many octopus, a cuttle fish, schools of fish like hottentot, kolstert, some red roman, a seal, two swimming nudibranchs (still to be identified) and many other beautiful creatures.

Shark Rock

The week has been promising us a good dive with prevailing NW winds blowing the whole time. As predicted the conditions were near perfect today, clear water, minimal swell and surge, no wind!
Dave, Shane and I ended up once again by Shark Rock, just short of Pyramid Rock in False Bay. A peacefull and beautifull 62 minutes later with and average depth of 9m, we surfaced at the exit point with smiles.

A warm welcome to Shane Scott, fresh out of Alpha Dive Centres open water course and into Scubacats. Shane joined us four weeks ago as skipper and now has completed his open water scuba course as well. Looking forward to many great dives with you buddy!

Dave and I headed out for A Frame this morning after a week of relatively good diving weather. The surface conditions did not look good at all with a rather strong SE wind blowing white horses in False Bay.

A Frame was a good choice and after watching the conditions for a while we saw there was very little swell, which meant very little surge.

Conditions in the water was very good, good vis, no surge and lots to see! We saw shysharks, various octopus, cuttle fish, blaasopies and kol-stert. Another great dive!

After a week of NW wind I was certain that we would have a great day of diving on Saturday. I was not disappointed!

Lesley, Mark and Craig headed out early this morning for False Bay. We had already decided that we would go back to what we now fondly talk of as Shark Rock. Conditions looked brilliant! I think that we are getting more comfortable with the entry and navigation of this site.

The visibility was very good, about ten to twelve meters. We descended immediately and headed for Shark Rock, bearing somewhere between 60 and 90. Before we even got to the rock we had our first sighting of a seven gill. We then proceeded to see several of these graceful animals and spent about fifteen minutes viewing, swimming alongside and photographing them. Some of them actually looked more interested in us than we in them, passing by extremely close.

This dive is definitely our number one at this time! Our very own resident shark dive.

One other thing that I would like to mention is that I believe that the MPA (Marine Protected Area) is working. I have been diving in False Bay for the last 10 years and definitely see a marked increase in fish life on our reefs. Well done to all that love our environment in the Cape!

SAS Pietermaritzburg Wreck Dive

After a week of mixed wind directions, we actually had great diving conditions out at Millers Point, False bay today.

We set out at 07:30 from Craig's house and headed for Millers Point boat club. After sorting out some gear issues (mmmm) and GPS co-ordinate issues we found the dive site and saw what we believed to be the PMB on the echo sounder. All kitted up we started the dive and descended right on top of the stern. Well done skipper (Shane Scott)!
The dive lasted 42 minutes and each of the 3 buddy pairs ascended on their own.

There was a swell running and this caused some particles in the water, not so good for photos unfortunately

Shark Diving in False Bay!

Shark Diving in False Bay?

We have recently been doing some diving just past Simon's Town at a site called Pyramid Rock. This site offers shark sightings 99% of the time. I am confident of seeing sharks here on every dive.

It is an experience that is hard to describe, when you see your first 3m broad-mouth seven-gill shark... wow!

This species is unique in that it has seven gills where most other sharks have five and as you can see from the photo has no dorsal fin. A bit of a pre-historic looking shark, and impressive when passing a meter away from a diver.

Growing to 4.5m in length these are gentle giants to be found in our beautiful waters in False Bay. A person actually feels very privileged to be able to see these animals in their natural environment.