While searching for sardine run action of Cape St Francis, we were treated to a vist by a fledgling giant petrel. Hugely inquisitive, the bird landed close to the boat and then proceeded to follow us around as we drifted during out tea break. Didier jumped into the water and filmed the bird on his Sony HD; I followed suit with my Nikon D200. According to Didier these birds are normally incredibly shy - this juvenile must have either been extremely bold or never had any form of contact with humans before.

 

 

During April the BBC Sardine Run team meet up in Plettenberg Bay to focus on capturing more footage for the Earth’s Great Event Series. Unlike last year, where I had been assisting Jusin Maguire topside, Hugh Person shifted me onto the underwater team to assist Didider Noirot, and to film underwater footage and stills for the making of section. We were plagued by bad visibility for much of this shoot - this image of a common dolphin and her baby shows just how bad - a function of upwellings and plankton blooms. In late May we kick off another five week shoot, our last chance to capture this compelling, dynamic yet elusive marine phenomenon.

 

If you’re looking for a great Christmas present, check out the latest book from Tom Peschak, Wild Seas, Secret Shores of Africa. It is available from most leading South African book stores, as well as from amazon.co.uk  if you don’t live in South Africa.

Tom has mastered the recipe for blending dry science with salacious imagery and prose, and the broth that he cooks up in this instance is a feast.

What sets Tom’s imagery apart is his commitment to creating images that put you in the action, through the use of a style on large and small animals alike that is almost macro-wide angle in nature. Another great feature of this book is a section at the back which features all of the images in the book with a short story of how it was shot, including the relevant camera settings

This morning we launched around 7am and headed north in a choppy North-Easter sea to the Pinnacles, a dive site in around 40m of water about 5km north of out launch site at Ponta Malangane. Although not much more than a small bump relative to other pinnacles we know of, this reef consistently attracts huge shoals of game fish and along with the game fish the ever impressive Zambezi or bull shark.

This dive however out target was something different, something one only finds in deeper water – a creature from the brittle star family known as a basket star. I have seen these before in the Canyon off Sodwana, and yet according to “Two Oceans – A guide to the marine life of southern Africa”, these animals range only as far north as East London. Basket stars like to attach themselves to sea fans, and we knew off a number on the bottom near the Pinnacle – if there was ever a good place to find them it would be there.

Using his local knowledge, Barry put us smack bang on top of the Pinnacle and we dived down quickly to avoid being swept off the spot we were looking for. Immediately on entering the water we saw the familiar shapes of Zambezi sharks cruising in the deep below us, as well as the silvery promise of large shoals of pelagic game fish.

Once on the bottom around 36m, Graeme scanned around for the sea fans and headed in their direction. At 36m on normal air Open Circuit we had precious time to linger – we had to find the basket star quickly and film it before heading up to a shallower depth to avoid going into decompression. And sure enough, there they were – two beautiful basket stars, which Graeme quickly pounced on and started filming. Tightly balled, one had to watch closely to see the motion of the tentacles, and despite our presence they failed to unfold – perhaps we will have to come back for a night dive.

Within what seemed a very short space of time our bottom time ran out and we ascended to around 20m to check out the blacktip kingfish and other pelagics. They swirled past in large numbers, rising up from the depths to circle us and then drift back down, intrigued at our presence but cautious of our size. The Zambi’s also followed us up to the surface, and as one circled below a large shoal of the blacktip kingfish trailed after it, as if playing a game of tag, and one even rubbed himself up against the shark to possible get rid of parasites. After a 2 minute safety stop at 5m we hit the surface and headed back to camp.

My second day with the Earth-Touch.com Marine Team based in southern Mozambique, and today we elected to take a drive north to Bass City, a reef in around 20m of water 5km’s north of Malangane.

The viz looked great and I was excited to be diving on Bass again, a reef I had last visited with Mitch Rankin in 2003 on our MarineTrek down the coast. Plunging overboard with Barry, we sank down onto a plethora of wildlife that is so characteristic of these reef systems in southern Mozambique, and immediately got to work. I watched intrigued as Burt, the resident male, immediately made a beeline for Barry, who with his larger girth and bigger camera clearly looked like the dominant of the two ‘invaders’ now entering his domain. As a I took some pics of Barry, Burt sidled over to me and gave me the stare treatment, in what some would view as curiosity but what I suspect is a challenge of sorts, maybe a bit of both.

Swimming north I followed Barry as he focused on picking up some great footage of the bass, the numerous moray eel species on the reef, and the two small garden eels, which bobbed in and out of their burrows as they sused out the neoprene visitors. After a dive time of around forty minutes, and tanks on 50bar, we headed of the surface, and no boat in site.

Where was Graeme? Staring out to sea, we could just make out the shape of his boat. Clearly he was either having engine trouble (unlikely with two motors), or he was into a fish. We reckoned the latter, and just waited for him to come in. About twenty minutes later he arrived, and sure enough he had succeeded in hooking into a sailfish. Unable to fight the fish and pick us up, he had tied his rod to some of his lifebuoys and ditched the whole lot into the sea, taken a waypoint on his GPS, and then raced in to pick us up.

We raced back out to the point and sure enough there were the lifebuoys. Graeme picked them up and the fight was on. Barry and I got ready, bailed over and captured this phenomenal animal as it worked its way around the boat, before Graeme released it and it slipped away into the infinite blue horizon.

On Saturday I joined underwater cameraman Charles Maxwell and a documentary team from Two Handed Productions for a day of filming off Hout Bay, which is a twenty minute drive from Cape Town. The team were filming an episode for their thirteen part documentary series for Animal Planet called ‘In Too Deep”, in which the presenter Jamie gets himslef into situations a bit outside of his comfort zone.

My role in the team on the day was to play the part of an ‘expert’ freediver, and to dive with Jamie amongst some real expert freedivers, the Cape Fur Seals. I also took my camera along to capture some production stills for the team and to get some images of Charles filming underwater. For a more detailed review of the experience, which included freediving with a Southern Right Whale, click here.

 Yesterday I took a drive up to Gansbaai with my mate Robin Sprong to pay a visit to Graeme Duane. Graeme is a freelance cameraman who is currently working in the field for an innovative new wildlife channel called Earth-Touch, which provides viewers with daily insights into wildlife activity from around the world. Browsing the site is not unlike browsing an interactive version of the BBC’s “Planet Earth”, and I must admit to finding it quite addictive.

We launched from Kleinbaai mid morning once the tide had come in, and headed out towards Dyer Island, the infamous hang out of the Gansbaai Great Whites. The sea was flat and the wind blowing a mild 10knots or so. We skirted the kelp fields inside of the island, and then entered the infamous ‘Shark Alley”, a shallow channel between Dyer Island and Geyser Rock. I could not believe the colours - the slightly overcast sky combined with the brilliant sun and the clear greenish water combined to create a visual feat of green, brown and blue hues which was truly breathtaking and quite frankly unexpected. For a moment I felt like I was in the Caribbean, but then  the reality that this we were about to dive in great white shark territory dawned and I felt truly privileged to finally be freediving in this phenomenal wildlife area.

With Robin on boat duty, Graeme and I slipped into the water and swam to the relative safety of the inshore area close to Geyser Rock. Graeme’s only advice was to keep some seals between us and the deeper part of the channel, but with it being summer we did not expect to see many great whites hanging out on the channel - it is in winter that they make this there killing ground.

Perhaps knowing this, there were a large amount of seals in the water, and with there inquisitive and playful natures, there was plenty to shoot. This was the first time that I had taken photographs of seals in this way, and it was a fantastic experience, not at all frightening, and only sometimes alarming when a lone bull seal cruised through occasionally to check us out. I was also amazed at the noises that the seals made, incredibly audible animals, not unlike a pack of hunting dogs.

Later that afternoon we headed down to Die Kelders to film whales from the shore, but despite the stunning location, the whales an the light failed to deliver up anything remarkable. After a classic fish and chips meal withGraeme and his wife and kids, Robin and I packed up and headed back to Cape Town. 

Dive Action Boat in action After a day of intermittent and at time torrential rain, Sunday dawned and it was a pearler. I met Barry at the slip at Miller’s Point, which is just outside Simon’s Town, and with four other divers we launched at around 11.30am and drove to a dive site close to Outer Caste

The visibility was good, around 15 meters, although quite green, and around 14 degrees Celsius. Barry, who was top manning for this dive, anchored up and we bailed over shortly thereafter. The reef profile was fantastic, huge boulder like structures covered in all sorts of sea life, with plenty of red roman and smaller reef fish to keep things interesting.

Outer Castle Area Cape waters really are a whole new playing field for me, and I’m really looking forward to exploring the massive diversity that the southern cape has to offer. Its going to take some time to get used to stalking and taking images on SCUBA and on the Inspiration, but the access that these technologies promise for certain subjects, particularly the Inspiration without the bubbles, is incredible. We’ve agreed to aim for a pool session on the Inspiration on Wednesday, which means I need to get in some time with the dry suit that Sijmon has kindly lent me - either way I think its going to happen this week.

CCR Theory TrainingThe journey continues. Over the last two weeks Andre and I have been working through the IAND, Inc Rebreather Module 1 course under the careful guidance of Barry Bey-Leveld of Dive Action, Cape Town, and its proving to be a stimulating and rewarding path. While we are both itching to actually get into the pool and sea with the unit, a deep and usable theoretical knowledge of the diver physiology and gas laws that underpin the functioning of the unit are critical to survival - there is no greater spur to learning than the prospect of a quick death if you get the answer wrong.

 
In a classic article entitled ‘A Learner’s Guide To Closed-Circuit Rebreather Operations’, Richard  L Pyle recounts his key learnings from his experience of using CCR units to explore what he calls the ‘twilight zone’, the zone between 60m and 150m that is largely unexplored. His abstract reads as follows:

“I have been using a Cis-Lunar Mk-4P mixed-gas, closed-circuit rebreather since 1994 for exploration of coral reefs at depths of 200 to over 400 ft /61-122 meters (the “Twilight Zone”). On a recent expedition to Papua New Guinea, my diving partner and I discovered nearly 30 new species of reef fishes as well as several new invertebrates. Among the most important lessons I have learned about decompression diving using rebreathers are: 1) the importance of knowing the oxygen partial pressure in the breathing loop at all times; 2) vast amounts of open-circuit diving experience does not help one learn how to dive with a rebreather as much as a solid understanding of gas physics and diving physiology does; 3) rebreather training regimes should place emphasis on manual operation and bailout procedures; and 4) divers should always have an alternate safe route to the surface, even in the event of a catastrophic, unrecoverable breathing loop failure. I have developed an assortment of protocols for conducting decompression diving using multiple diluent mixtures with closed-circuit rebreathers, as well as procedures for various emergency bailout scenarios. I believe that it is vitally important that past, current and future rebreather divers maintain an open line of communication in order to share experiences and techniques, in an effort to minimize the potential for fatal or otherwise harmful accidents.”

From what Barry has taught us to date, this appears to be valuable council, and backs up the key themes that I am picking up in the various text books and articles on the subject. This weekend the plan is to do the pool session tomorrow and then hopefully our first sea dive on Sunday. The weather is not great, with rain forecast for tomorrow, so we will have to wait and see.

 

Shark Week on Discovery I just got a mail from my mate Ryan Johnson, alerting me to the schedule of Discovery’s Shark Week which kicks off on the 29th of June. You can check it out on their website here.

What’s clear from a quick perusal of the line up is that South Africa is a hotspot for shark interaction and by extension shark documentaries. If you look at the eight premieres, three were shot primarily in South Africa (Deadly Stripes, Tiger Sharks; Sharks: A Family Affair and Sharkman), and it is likely that some of the others will contain footage shot off South African waters.

I’m really excited to see the final release of Sharkman, a film by Craig and Damon Foster that explores the phenomenon of tonic immobility in sharks in an attempt to challenge the dominant perspective of sharks as unemotional killing machines. I’ve seen a rough cut of the doccie and even that was powerful, so its going to be a treat to see the final product from this talented team that first won critical acclaim for their documentary on the bushman called ‘The Last Dance’.

Also premiering are two movies about two friends - Ryan Johnson is appearing in Shark Tribe, a documentary that explores the relationship between sharks and men in New Guinea, and Mark Addison is appearing in a move called Deadly Stripes, Tiger Sharks, which explores the movement patterns of Tiger Sharks on Aliwal Shoal. Better be good boys!

I also received an email from Woilfgang Leander about Shark Week, written from a different perspective. alerting me to a petition being driven by Ila France Porcher on behalf of the Shark Discussion List. In this petition Ila makes the point that the positioning of Shark Week and the choice of shark film titles simply adds to the wildly entrenched view of sharks as mindless killing machines:

“How can we support Discovery Channel when we are fighting for shark conservation, and its biggest obstacle is the monster image given to sharks by the media, including Shark Week programs? Further, some of us who have been directly involved in the production of your documentaries feel disgusted at the way that our interviews were censored and our words twisted around.”

This is perhaps a classic case of the dilemma that faces all media companies in search of the ‘block buster’ - how far does one go in order to ensure that the film becomes a commercial success? Read Ila’s edited petition here and sign up if you agree. I certainly do.

This image of a tiger shark on Aliwal Shoal was shot using a Nikon D200 with a 12 - 24 Nikkor lens, focal length 12 mm, Shutter Speed 1/250. F4. focus Mode AF-S, Exposure Mode Shutter priority, Metering Mode Center Weighted.

As much as it makes sense to get really close to your underwater subjects, especially when diving in water that is not crystal clean, I still have an instinctive passion for these types of
underwater ‘landscape’ shots. Somehow they capture for me the experience of being underwater, especially on one breath, far more powerfully than any other perspective. In this shot, Wolfgang Leander freedives down to try and get into the perfect position for a shot of one of the tiger girls.

This image (click on the image to enlarge) was created using a Nikon D200 in a Sea and Sea Housing, with a 12 - 24 Nikkor lens set to 12 (about 18/19 full frame equivalent), set on Shutter Priority 1/250s, f4, using two Inon Z240 strobes.

Tuesday night saw the opening of SoulCube 01, an exhibition of some of the underwater images I’ve taken over the last two years. For me it was a fantastic opportunity to connect with old friends, and a symbolic statement of intent that I’m serious about commercializing my photography.

I really want to say thanks to all who came to support me, meant a lot. Special mention must go to Mitch, who flew down from Durban especially for the event, Ebrahim, who at very short notice used his electrical expertise to do a great job of helping me install the lightboxes, my boys Ryan and Kyran who did a great job behind the bar, and Alexi of Romano Signs for providing me with the six primary SoulCube frames. And of course, thanks to Alison and Robin of the Exposure Gallery for their help and support.

The exhibition is up until around the 3rd of June, so still plenty of time to check it out. The lightboxes really work incredibly well with underwater imagery, really worth a look! The Exposure Gallery is in the Old Biscuit Mill in Woodstock, close to the Salt River Circle, 373 Albert Rd.

The last day of the Freedive Competition organised by Hanli Prinsloo and Sebastian Naslund saw a mixed bag of performances from competitors, the majority of whom under performed, perhaps blown by the action at the Extreme Hotel on Friday night.

Me, NFD, Pic by Jeff Ayliffe   I passed on the static contest to focus on the Dynamic No Fins discipline, in which the competitor has to swim as far as possible underwater without fins before executing a strict surface protocol for the judges within 15 seconds, or face disqualification. My best distance in training was around 80m, and having done an unofficial 40m No Fins Constant Weight the weekend before, I was pysched to go beyond 75m in competition, with 90m being an ideal outcome.

In the advanced course the previous week, Sebastian had advised never finishing a pool session at the wall, and taking this advice I was determined to complete the 3 x 25m pool lengths, turn, and then make a call as to when to surface on the final lap. The dive went exactly to plan, and I ended up surfacing at 89m, close to my limit but still capable of executing the surface protocol, with some help from my coach for the dive, Mike Wood. Has Mike not reminded me to remove my nose clip I would have been disqualified, and the fact that I don’t remember taking it off is indicative of how close I was to an LMC (Loss of Motor Control)

But perhaps the most stellar performance of the competition came from Richard Slater-Jones, a newbie freediver who came out of nowhere and banged a 114m Dynamic With Fins. Quite frankly that is rude, kind like a newbie golfer smacking a hole in one on his third round of golf. Regardless, Richard showed amazing talent and willpower to post such a distance, and this again confirms my belief that with the right attitude anyone can learn to free dive effectively in an amazingly short space of time, with the right tuition…

Trevor Hutton Clean 60m Never thought I would see it happen! Today Sebastian Naslund and Hanli Prinsloo held an AIDA sanctioned freedive competition off Hout Bay, Cape Town, using an innovative drifting freedive rig with a counter ballast system, that safely allowed Trevor Hutton to dive to 60m on constant weight, a solid performance from an ex-world champion who loves his freediving, and whose on the charge back into a competitive mindset. Clearly not the most optimal conditions to hold a freedive comp, with swell, cold water and less than crystal viz, but full credit must go to Hanli and Sebastian for the will and ingenuity to make it happen. Tomorrow night we have the official kick off event at the Extreme Hotel in Cape Town, should be a lot of fun.

Sebastian Naslund   This last weekend saw several local freedivers spend two and a half intensive days with Sebastian Naslund, the Swedish Freediving Coach and former Swedish record holder in a number of freediving disciplines including free immersion (65m), Constant Weight No Fins (51m) and Dynamic No Fins DNF (109m). Together with Hanli Prinsloo, an AIDA qualified coach and judge, Sebastian shared with us his philosophy on how to prepare for ‘the big one’, that deep dive or long static in which you explore the outer limits of your being’s ability to deal with high levels of CO2 and low levels of O2.

I found the course incredibly useful as a way of consolidating much of the knowledge that I picked up in my own brief competitive career, the bulk of which I gleaned while from training for three months with South African freediver Bevan Dewar. While their respective approaches to freediving differ slightly in specifics and in application, both share an underlying set of assumptions grounded in willpower and the recognition that there are many paths to ‘the big one’. On behalf of all who attended, thanks to both Sebastian and Hanli for the energy they put into the course. For more pics, click here.

 

Wolf Bite! Back in Cape Town after my nine Tiger Shark Dive Bonanza with Wolfgang Leander and Blue Wilderness, I’ve barely had a chance to unload my car. Leaving Kokstad at 3am in the morning, I arrived back in Cape Town fourteen hours later just in time for Craig Milner’s crayfish braai, Karin Colsen’s wedding the next morning, and then the three day advanced freediving course being run by Hanli Prinlsoo and Sebastian Norslund.

Today is the first day I’ve had a chance to get to my inbox, respond to mail, and to review some of the images captured last week - by Friday I should have a selection of the best images, as well as some feedback on my photographic learnings from the trip

While doing the review I found this image of Wolfgang, which to me captures the fun side of a man who really loves his sharks and who has dedicated the rest of his life to diving with them and fighting for their protection. Half Tintin, half Costeau, he’s still up in Natal diving with the tigers, and I reckon he’s gonna be coming back for me, hopefully on a regular basis. I’ll get a report from him later this week on how he’s doing without me. Check out his site, www.oceanicdreams.com, and the blog driven by his son Felix, here.

Shark Freedive Photographers!Wahoo, couda, zambezi sharks, blacktip sharks, tiger sharks - the Shoal was cooking today and almost wickedly blue. We had around 30m viz, although there was still a degree of particulate in the water, and for some reason I didn’t crack any tiger shot’s worth posting. Not that the tigers didn’t play ball - at one stage we had seven in sight and probably one or two more on the bottom - it really was brilliant interaction. Wolfgang was loving the opportunity to get so intimate with his beloved tigers, and increasingly enjoying the blacktips, whom he calls his ‘puppies’.

Today was supposed to be my last day, but given the superb conditions, I have decided to spend another day with the Blue Wilderness Team in my quest for the ultimate tiger shot. Means I am going to have a long drive back to Cape Town on Thursday, but its worth the opportunity to dive in the ‘Shark Park’ as Mark Addision calls it.

Tiger and Keith RossouwFor a while now I have been in touch with a man called Wolfgang Leander, a 66 year old freedive photographer and shark conservationist who has a real passion for freediving with sharks. Yesterday I finally got to meet him, appropriately in the water surrounded by his favourite animal, the tiger shark.

Wolf is in South Africa for two weeks to further develop his relationship and understanding of these amazing animals, and together we hope to create some great images which will underscore man’s ability to freedive in harmony with these graceful and intelligent creatures, images similar to this one that I took of Keith of Blue Wilderness with a beautiful female tiger shark. Today we be the first day that Wolf and I dive together with the team from Blue Wilderness, and I sense that it will be the first of many.

Grim Viz on Aliwal!Went out to Deep Scotties yesterday with Simon De Waal from Bluewilderness in search of tiger sharks, but the viz had turned evil and was around 2 meters in the usual viewing grounds, so we headed deeper in search of cleaner water. Ended up waiting an hour on the fringe of the territory, but no sharks. En route back Simon, an American client and I did a quick dive on Launders reef - despite the poor viz, it was really interesting, with green sponge coral, goldies, whip corals, devil firefish, a big shoal of sangora yellowtail. With the west having pushed through, will try again on Friday morning - its always cleaner on Aliwal after a west.