This long weekend proved to be way better than the Easter Weekend, with a couple of full boats and pristine dive conditions. On Monday, most people went back to work and the planned double tank launch to St. Francis was canned with a looming cold front on the horizon. Instead we opted to go and discover the unknown territory between the Kabeljouws and the Gamtoos river mouths dubbed Caves.
As some of you know and may not know, Paul, our photographer, has turned into a real jetsetting hotel fly. With him being all over the country on work outings, he did not do any dives for close to 2 months. It just so turned out that he got the weekend off on short notice and when Jacques sent him an sms at 07:53 Monday morning to ask if he would like to go for a dive, he managed to pull himself out of bed and be ready withing 15 minutes. There was no time to rig his camera, but Steve was so kind to allow Paul to use his compact Sony. We could not picture Paul on a dive without a camera and in the end, it all worked out well.
The dive times varied between 35 and 40 minutes, due to the water being on the colder side of 14 degrees. We found that there were lots of sand and loose silt on the bottom, and the closer we got to the shore, the more sandy it became. When we turned around, we found some caves and large overhangs. Highlights were a flatworm that Paul and Steve spotted, as well as some Domino Dorids. Paul also photographed a big healthy Nudi. It was remarked by somebody that the corals are in very good shape and there were several singular coral "flowers" that were larger than 1m across. As all dives, it all ended too soon. We will definitely be back for more at this spot. It is amazing to see how much variation there is in the underwater zones if you just move a few clicks East or West from the usual diving spots.
Some images of the day taken by Paul van Jaarsveld.
