29.9. 2019
Yep, i am lazy !!!
It is after all still holiday time for us. We worked like hell towards this treat of being off for 3 months.
August, September and October are ours to do with whatever we feel like. Yes !!
And how we enjoy this time !!!
Around 6h30 the sun wakes me up. The dogs get restless and want to go outside, i sit up straight in bed and look out to sea.
I love watching the humpback whales win past, some breaching, others fin slapping, waving with their flukes or just breathing water through their blow hole.
After a while Beulah comes up with a cup of coffee and rusks.
Life is good.
I take the dogs to the beach, i do odd jobs around the house and only do the bare necessity of work.
Me and Beulah are happy spending time together at home, the dogs are totally happy and relaxed and the house staff probably hate us watching them all day…
Of course there is no month without something happening.
One day i git a phone call that a whale had washed up dead on the beach.
It was sunday and i really did not feel like doing much. But a dead whale is a chance in a lifetime to get shark bait.
So i phoned some of my staff and met them on the whale where they got busy joining a huge group of whale meat enthusiasts…
We got about 200 kilo which we have frozen. For the next year we will have the best bait for our shark dives anyone can wish for.
As sad as it is to see a dead giant decaying on the beach, it is all part of life.
Maybe the wale had a disease ? Maybe he dies from an injury ? Or maybe from pollution ?? Nobody knows.
But if this happens, the carcass needs to be removed as soon as possible. As it decays, it flops on the ground like a mass of fat. It is too heavy to remove and its oil and body fluids ooze into the ocean attracting sharks like hell to the area.
This becomes a problem for swimmers and surfers.
Our municipality had to close the beaches nearby for swimming as they have spotted increased shark activity.
They phoned us and asked if we could not tow the carcass out to sea so the natural process could take place.
This is actually the best way to get rid of a dead ocean animal.
This is the job of the sharks !!!
Unfortunately the whale was way too heavy for us to even try and tow. I think, we would have pulled our engines off the boat. Seriously.
But mother nature had her own natural ways of getting rid of the problem.
People !!!
We took about 200 kilo for our business, other people took almost everything within about 5 days.
Like i said, we got about 200kg and did a test yesterday. We filled our bait ball with whale meat, actually blubber and went out to Protea Banks.
The fat made an oil corridor of note.
As this is natural oil from a dead whale, it is in no form any pollution in the water.
This oil slick attracted many sharks in no time.
We had a tiger shark to start with followed by two bull sharks and 10 black tips.
Really, a tiger shark this time of the year !!! This is entirely due to the whale blubber.
Thirty shopping bags filled with blubber are awaiting our divers for the next 12 months or more.
Anybody wanting to do our Baited Shark Dive will get a good deal for sure.
As we use the stuff, we put it back into the bags and re freeze it. We are most stingy with our prized bait and won’t let go of any until it is completely used up.
The visibility was barely 5m yesterday and the water temp 21Ëš
Actually, the windy season started last week. Usually the wind blows pretty hard from August to October and slows down by November.
Nowadays the windy season goes from October to August….damn.
Not that bad, but the number of windy days definitely picked up significantly. We are still lucky that the wind intensity has not changed too much. Thinking of what hurricanes they have in the Caribbean and USA, we are still in the best place here in South Africa.
Beulah and i are leaving for Egypt on 1.10.
We booked a live aboard trip for May this year, postponed it to August this year and finally get it done in October now.
After wards we will spend three weeks with mother in Germany. See how she copes on her own now and give her a hand here and there.
In the meantime, our staff will look after the diving business and hopefully have a lot of great diving days out there although i doubt that judging by the weather forecast.
Either way, the boys need to dearest and get back on the horse.
Far too many holidays for them too…
4.9.2019
We are back in South Africa for a week now and got most of the ducks back in the row.
In general we are on our winter break. August, September and October are traditionally our quiet months. We are so looking forward to this magic, stress free time when we can be normal for a change.
I had to check my logbook and found that I did my second last dive on 28 June and my last dive on 18. July. This was mainly due to Sardine run staff shortages where I was driving the boat everyday. Afterwards I got My Arm bitten by my fighting dogs and could not go in the water. Then my father was diving and I had to rush back to Germany .
So when we got these two French divers whose booking I confirmed some time ago we took the opportunity and made it a staff outing.
We all were so, so keen in diving. Almost were jumping up and down in anticipation.
Yesterday and today we had really great weather, flat ocean and all round excellent conditions.
On our baited dive we saw 10 black tips, one bull shark, one dusky and about 100 Hammerheads.
Vis is the typical 15m, water had 21C, air 27C.
On the second dive we went to the Southern Pinnacle of Protea Banks and had again lots of black tips and about 150 hammerheads.
Today I could not go out with the guys and as is always the case, the diving was a cracker.
On the baited dive Steve reports several thousand hammerheads !!!!!
Second dive on the Northern Pinnacle of Protea Banks they had about 20 Raggies.
And tomorrow our holiday continues…..