Wow. What a bumber holiday season we are having at African Waters Scuba! The phone was ringing a lot in the last two months with people wanting to book dives in J-Bay and we also got a large volume of online requests. We have been operational in Jeffreys again since a week ago, with multiple launches daily.
Underwater Photos taken in Jeffreys Bay and St. Francis Bay
These are some of the photos taken and dive logs written mostly by myself or Jacques Alberts who operated in Jeffreys Bay under the African Waters Scuba brand for many years. We include these old photos and stories here, so that you can get an idea of what it looks like underwater in our area.
On Saturday we dived Shark Point Pinnacle at St Francis and although it is quite a long way by boat the reef is so worth the effort. 18 Deg water with great viz was in store for the divers. We descended just to the west of the pinnacle but due to a slight current we couldn't stay around it and had a look at what lies on the west side of the reef.
Well our annual JBay dive fest has come and gone and although the wind threatened to blow us away we had perfect dives on Sunday with 15m viz and flat seas. A total of 5 launches were done during the festival with boats filled to capacity!! Raggies are back and some nice photos of them were taken during the weekend.
On Sunday we dived Jagged Edge Reef, the old favourite and once again it was a great dive. Viz was about 5m with a fresh 14 deg and bottom time of 43 min. Some new faces on the boat again and a welcome to them all from us.
Paul van Jaarveld writes: On Saturday morning we dropped into clean water at a spot we call Caves. Depth varied between 10m and 18m and viz was varied greatly depending on sand patches or reef. The best viz was about 15m and the worst about 5m. Bottom temp dropped to 14 degrees and it was 18 degrees on top.
After a chilly pool sessions with some of the students from the JBay Language School on Saturday we had a surprisingly warm dive on Discovery Channel Reef on Sunday. A leopard cat shark was spotted, some nice nudi's and there were still lots of fish life. A couple of double sash butterfly fish also made their appearance to the delight of the divers doing their PADI Discover Scuba dive.
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.
During Easter weekend the weather didn't play along and we only managed to do 2 launches in JBay. On Saturday the water temp dropped to between 11 and 9 degrees with about 2 to 3m viz. On the surface there were loads of activity with a few whales and dolphins, birds dropping like "kamakazi pilots" into the bait balls and our highlight was a huge sunfish at the surface.
On Sunday we sneaked in another launch although the westerly was blowing lightly. The rain that kept falling made it quite interesting for the 4 ladies on the boat who went along for the ride. Luckily Cobus brought 3 little flasks of "hanepoot" but by the time the divers surfaces they were all alomst finished thanks to Nellie!!
No one had a camera at hand so no pics this time, sorry. Thanks to Buks from ADG and Simon from the UK for their visit.