Malcolm Nobbs - 2015 Jun

In June 2015 Mick Todd and I travelled to Simon’s Town in False Bay as part of an Andy Murch Big Fish Expeditions group. Boulders Beach with its resident African penguins is a great local tourist attraction but we were there, albeit keeping our fingers crossed, to see over ten species of Sharks on the Eastern Cape – Great Whites, Makos, Blue Sharks, Sevengill Sharks, Spotted Gully Sharks, Puffadder Shy Sharks, Dark Shysharks, Pyjama Cat Sharks, Yellowspotted Cat Sharks and Leopard Cat Sharks. We didn’t get off to a great start. The weather was cold, miserable and windy with grey skies and occasional drizzle. Few Great Whites had been sighted for over two months thanks, it was thought, to the presence of Killer Whales and all boat activities had been cancelled due to strong winds. As usual on an overseas trip Mick quickly developed a sore throat.

The weather for our first dive in Simon’s Town harbour could hardly have been worse and poor Mick was seriously affected by his cold and certainly in no fit state to dive. The visibility underwater wasn’t great and the bucketing rain hardly helped the natural light but even so I really enjoyed the dive from Shark Explorer 1, seeing four species of Cat Sharks that I had not seen before, the Pyjama Shark, the Puffadder Shark, the Leopard Shark and the Dark Shyshark. Our second dive was a repeat of the first but with the bonus of a diving Cormorant joining me underwater. My third “dive” from Sea Explorer 2, was at Seal Island, 8 nautical miles from Simon’s Town. The island is home to 75,000 Cape Fur Seals and is the hunting ground for the Great White Shark. With a severe weather front approaching False Bay we had just a few hours before it would hit. We viewed some Great Whites from the safety of a shark cage in unfortunately poor underwater visibility.

Only harbour diving was possible the following day but at least there was a marginal improvement on the final two days. We could again dive outside of the harbour, this time on Explorer 1 but the underwater visibility remained really bad and we had to contend with heavy swells. However excitingly I did see Hagfish, a prehistoric species that I had not seen before. These living fossils are eel-shaped slime-producing green fish, the only known living animals that have a skull but no vertebral column. Similar to their ancestors from around 300 million years ago, they in common with Lampreys are jawless. A positive end to our stay in False Bay.