May
25.5. 2013
Dream weather here. No wind at all, warm to hot days, smooth sea and full on sunshine . Under water we have 20m vis, 23 C temp and our usual 2 kn current.
We went to the caves yesterday and only had one lonely raggy . This has never happened as long as I can remember. Usually the Raggies arrive end of April or beginning of May. Strange.
On our baited dive we saw a Tiger before we went in and afterwards one Zam and 9 Black Tips. This is far too many of them. Never knew such numbers in Black Tips on Protea Banks.
This coincides with our row with the fishermen over recent shark killings we are protesting against. Facebook is running red hot with messages and photos of cruel mutilation of some sharks done by Mighty Fishing Charters and Must Byt Fishing Charters. These people are ruthless killers and must be exposed as such.
Understandably 85000 Facebook users from around the world agree with us. Beulah and JP are working tirelessly to create an online petition but they struggle due to inexperience. The idea is to collect as many signatures as possible and bring it to the attention of our politicians. In the meantime I am trying to organise a meeting with all relevant user groups such as Tourism, Wildlife, Fishermen and conservationists. Hopefully we can find an agreement or a way to force this slaughter to stop in Shelly Beach immediately. Unfortunately everything takes time…
15.5. 2013
We had many good dives since i wrote last. Lots of sharks on both, Baited Dives and normal reef dives on Protea Banks. We even saw some Hammerheads lately which is completely unusual for this time of the year. On the other hand we still don’t have any Raggies yet. They have not been so late as long as i can remember.
Yesterday i did my 3000th dive and wanted to celebrate a bit. Unfortunately i got a message that Eddie from Mighty Charters killed our beloved Tiger Shark Holey-Moley. This shark had a huge hole behind it’s head when we first saw her in December. I didn’t think she would survive the wound. Obviously caused by a violent fisherman. Luckily the gentle and good natured animal survived…until yesterday…. Her head was cut off at sea and the body dumped, which is illegal here. What a complete waste of a prized tourism resource. So many divers have experienced and enjoyed this animal this season. She was completely harmless. I sincerely hope that its killer will pay for it one day….
9.5. 2013
My German group has moved on to the game park and left us sad. We are almost neighbours at the German show and got to know each other nicely. Martin brings us coffee every morning and stays for a chat. So his visit was special to us. But we had a good time diving together. Conditions varied from extremely good to extremely tough. An experience for everybody. We saw plenty of sharks, even species not common at this time of the year like hammerhead and dusky. They experienced tiger, Zambezi, black tip and saw the first raggy of the season. Even a blue marlin showed its colours and amazed every diver in the water.
The sea was from duck pond to raging mass of water with waves over 3m high. It surely wasn’t a boring holiday.
Today we just managed to do a Baited Dive before the westerly buster blew us right home again. 12 black tips and 3 Zams in 23c and 12m vis. Current around 2kn.
Tomorrow should be perfect after this wind…..
5.5. 2013
Lost two good days to the damn wind again. Yesterday we had real shit weather with lots of rain and strong 30kn wind. When this wind did not stop in the evening but kept on pumping through the night we knew we would not be able to get out today. The big freight ships were ploughing through 5m swells. Serious stuff.
Of course our dive boats could master stuff like that but we were not sure if our divers could….B-)
Anyway it is looking good for tomorrow and we will be able to catch up the lost dives. Excellent conditions are expected after such storms and the sharks will be waiting for us…
4.5. 2013
We are pretty busy at the moment. Two boats a day doing two dives. JP did a Baited Dive and got a tiger, 3 zams and 12 black tips. I dived South and had 2 tigers, 3 zams, 3 black tips, 1 hammerhead and 4 giant guitar sharks. Excellent dive but the vis was not the greatest with about 8m top half and 15m bottom half.
Second dive we checked the caves but the raggies have not yet arrived. This could possibly be due to the strong 3kn current we are having for the last week or more.
Today we are blown out by a strong SW’ly. Not a bad thing actually as it will bring us clean and warm water for tomorrow and beyond.