Dive Report – Long Beach


Date/Time: 2014/08/10 12h30 | Site: Long Beach | Bottom Time: 1h50m | Temp: 14 C | Viz: 8m

Haro!

Anyone that bothered to open a curtain yesterday would have noticed that is was the absolute most perfect day ever, so if for some bizarre reason you didn’t dive yesterday, I hope that you’ve got something sweet handy while reading this because you might be left with a sour taste in your mouth.

Myself, Justin, Ronel and Anina met at Pisces at 09h30-ish and decided to take a drive up and down the coast just to scout for the best possible site for the day. Although it was a warm, clear and sunny day, there was a tiny short interval swell which made some sites less appealing due to their entry types. Long Beach was however a beauty as always and we decided to have a little pre-Finathon gander at perhaps Cape Town’s most underrated dive site. The delay brought on by our site scrutiny was a profitable one as we were later joined by none other than Paul and Petra which made our dive team a very healthy 6 man squad.

So into the drink we went, and I in my infinite wisdom forgot to turn on my dive computer until about 20 minutes into the dive, so my profile now indicates the type of rapid descent that’ll strike fear into the heart of many a diver. 0-5m in under a second. Beat that.

Back to the dive. There was a slight thermocline at the very surface, dropping to 13 degrees with a maximum of 14 thoughout the remainder of the dive. The viz was about 8m although it deteriorated later during the dive. I’ll start by saying this: Somewhere, someone is blasting Lionel Richie at the reef because EVERYTHING is spawning. We saw juvenile everything. Literally. It was like a midget zoo down there. Have you ever seen a juvenile flounder? I wanted to take them home and name them. No bigger than my thumb and already masters of camouflage. There were dense clouds of what I initially mistook for mysid shrimp, and which ended up being the spawn of something. What exactly, I’m unsure as they were fairly see-through being that small. We also saw big sea hare, juvenile sea hare, and the most gorgeous dwarf sea hare, and then of course the usuals like Klipfish. Sadly, the first dive yielded no cephalopods. But our sadness was quickly turned to instant awesomeness when False Bay’s most playful seal, hereafter referred to as “Tony”, made his debut and spent a good few minutes entertaining us. Mind you, I think it was a female so we’ll rather call her “Tonilla”, which is the obvious gender opposite of “Tony”. Don’t worry, I’ve got it all on tape. In fact three of us got it on tape so you’ll be treated to the 3D experience once I’ve cleaned up the viz and changed the hue to make it seem like we were diving the tropics 😀

That marked the end of the 70-minute dive and we were all happy and content with the results. But then Justin was all “Hey I’ve got 100 bar left, lets pretend to be lost on a deserted island and walk a mile up the coast for the second dive”, and so we started the long walk to freedom. I reached complete awareness after the first 100m, and after that I saw a man riding a unicorn while “More than a feeling” was playing from somewhere. I suspect heatstroke. After losing about 3kg in body fluids, we did our second dive in Sodwana. Okay it wasn’t that far up the coast, but walking in wet scuba gear is like doing crossfit after falling asleep on the couch watching a whole season of your favourite series. The body does not want to excersize after doing something as relaxing as diving.

For our second dive, we entered the water directly opposite a yacht that was at anchor fairly close to the beach, and after last weekend’s Blub-Blub Club ‘n Pub Sub Scrub, I was all too eager to see the bottom of a floating boat again. So we shot to the yacht and I got a slight case of rigor mortis after seeing how filthy it was. Sis man. Keep your boat clean. Also, this guy had unrolled enough chain to anchor in the challenger deep. Luckily his anchor did not damage any sea life other wise I would have been forced to remove his propeller for… um… scientific purposes 😀

On our way out, I saw amongst the unending sand a circle of broken shells and stuff which meant the home of Davy Jones, and sure enough, as I approached I saw him entering the depths of his lair. Luckily Justin had a torch and his lair was only THAT deep, so Justin managed to gander at his now squinty mug.

To my much appreciated surprise, we exited the water back where we were parked which meant I didn’t have to pay taxi fare to get back to Long Beach, but then I guess as is the nature of dives with Justin “Human Compass” Johnson.

The second dive lasted just under 40min which meant that for the day, we did almost two hours on a single tank each. Myself, Anina, Paul and Petra ended the day sipping down coffee at Dixies and giggling at all you folks who spent the day on land.

Matter of fact, I’m giggling still… 😀

-M


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