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After three days on the water, our planned break at Mazeppa Bay was heartily welcomed by all. The activity we’d been witness to on the first three days of our trip had left us in a dazed haze and our bodies, unused to being on the boat for 6 hours, were in bad need of a break.

Despite our tiredness, we still managed to rise early and take in the beauty of the morning sunrise. A soft orange sun that painted Mazeppa’s beach and rocky island in pastel colours greeted us, while the sea gently washed perfectly formed waves on the beach and rocks.

Mazeppa Bay is one of those little-known quiet spots of beauty and serenity. Frequented mostly by anglers, it has a wide beach flanked by a rocky island that reaches out into the sea. Between the beach and the island is an exquisite suspension bridge that simply invites a crossing. From the island, sets of magnificent waves roll off the backline into the bay - a surfing paradise? The hotel’s bar is a display centre for the many anglers who have fished this bay for years. Photographs of anglers with magnificent catches of various game fish hang dustily on the walls and, of course, there are photographs of anglers with the sharks they have caught – mainly Raggies, Duskys, Coppers and Zambezis. This was probably the hardest part of the trip for our team to accept but accept it we did, reminding ourselves that this trip was a fact finding mission and not a crusade.

Our day was spent exploring inland. Michael, our guide for the day, took us to meet with local entrepreneurs and a Sangoma and her family. We met with Rodney, who has returned to his family home after an absence of 10 years and who is in the process of rebuilding the fruit business that once thrived there. This was a common theme of the people we met – rebuild, escape from the city and get back to nature.We were privileged to meet with a Sangoma and her family. Her Grandmother, at 93 years old, was a treat and an inspiration and kept us amused with her antics.

We ended the day by climbing the dunes north of the bay. It is rumoured that a treasure ship was wrecked on this beach and the treasure buried beneath what is now a very large dune.

We didn’t attempt to dig for gold but had huge fun climbing the dune and running down.

Mazeppa is a wonderful peaceful place to rest your soul and take in the beauty of the Transkei. Go take a look.

Cape Town - A whale that became entangled in a 40-metre nylon rope was freed on Saturday afternoon near Gordon’s Bay in a meticulously planned rescue operation.

Employees from the department of environmental affairs, with the support of the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), used sharp knives to cut free the one-year-old southern right whale, which presumably became entangled on Friday afternoon at Hangklip.

The crew of a boat in False Bay saw on Friday night how the whale was hitting the water with its tail and realised it was in distress and was probably tangled.

“But it was nearly dark and we decided to only go out the next morning,” said Mike Meyer, a spokesperson of the department for environmental affairs’ branch for oceans and coast, on Sunday evening.

“All along the coastline there are fish nets in which whales can become entangled. When a whale swims into a net, it starts turning round and round in an attempt to free itself. But that is actually the worst thing it can do because then it becomes more entangled.”

Infection

According to Meyer, a rope like that usually caught on the thin part of the tail, in front of the tail fin.

Often, as was also the case with this whale, there was a buoy attached to the rope. If an entangled whale was not helped, it could die eventually.

“The rope cuts into the animal’s flesh and it leads to infection.”

“The buoy keeps the animal on the surface of the ocean and prevents him from feeding and eating properly.”

“As this whale was helped within a day, he was not injured too badly,” Meyer added.

Officials from the branch asked the NSRI, tourist boats and other boats to look out for the whale on Saturday morning.

After they established that it was near Koeël Bay, NSRI volunteers took three members of the branch in NSRI boats to the whale.

Quick operation

They herded the whale to calmer waters in Gordon’s Bay.

They could then throw a kedge anchor on a rope toward him so that it could be fixed to the rope on his tail. Two buoys were tied to the rope so that the whale would remain on the surface.

Then they switched off the boat’s engines and carefully approached the whale. They pulled the rope toward them and carefully cut it off with sharp knives.

The rescue operation took about 30 minutes.

Cormac is currently on a 7 day expedition from Port Elizabeth to Port St Johns. The trip is an exploratory sea-going venture to gain a better understanding of the marine life on the South African East Coast. The trip has been organized jointly by African Diver and Rainer Schimpf of Expert Tours (www.expert-tours.com).

Rainer operates from his base at Port Elizabeth and this trip has long been an ambition of his. He also runs and NGO called Ocean Messengers (www.ocean-messengers.com) which focuses on ocean conservation.

Entries in the blog catalogue Cormac’s trip and the October issue of African Diver magazine will carry a full feature on it.

Further blog entries from other parties on the expedition can be found at www.mype.co.za

Day 2

Port Alfred to East London

After a lazy breakfast our little party left Port Alfred destined for East London. Once again the weather Gods had been kind to us and we delighted in another lazy sea day. That said, waves were crashing on the rocky coastline and leaving the harbour at Port Alfred was an exciting mad dash out of the harbour entrance once we caught a lull in the waves. Although we had a lazy sea, the sky was overcast and grey, but it looked like the clouds would burn off in a midday sun and we would be treated to blue skies again.

It didn’t take us long to find some excitement and we spent about an hour tailing a small Humpback family; two adults and a calf. This was consistent with our experience of the previous day when we had come across several small families of 2 adults and a calf.

Having left the Humpback family to their meanderings we headed into deeper water hoping to find some form of marine action. Great shafts of sunlight broke through the cloud cover in patches illuminating huge spot-lit areas of the ocean. Now and then blue sky broke over our heads, encouraging us to move ever deeper.

As the cloud cover broke up, in the distance, we caught sight of Gannets wheeling and diving and so we raced towards them. As we got closer it became apparent that the Gannets were following a mega-pod of Common Dolphin. The pod was spread out and was obviously hunting. Every now and then the dolphin would isolate a school of fish and the Gannets would wheel in and dive into the water to feed. The dolphin and Gannet were hunting Garfish and not Sardines as we had hoped.

The dolphin, were in a playful mood and each time we sped up the swiftly slipped into our bow wave to surf in front of our boat. Because the pod was so spread out we were able to “work” a very large patch of the ocean and “play” with them.

At some stage during all of this activity the pod came upon a two families of Humpback Whale and we were treated to the magnificent experience of having two species of cetacean sharing the ocean with us.

By now the sun had won its battle with the clouds and the sky was a magnificent azure and so was the ocean. It was too inviting to miss and so we kitted up and joined the dolphin in the water. Visibility was a magnificent 20 meters and clear of phytoplankton. Sunrays danced in front of us as it pierced and illuminated the waters beneath us.

We could hear the clicks and squeaks of the dolphin but also the deeper rumble of the Humpbacks. With so much activity the ocean sounded like a high street in Johannesburg in peak traffic.

We realised we were in the path of the oncoming whales and readied our cameras in the hope of a once-in-a-lifetime shot …

Little did I know just how once-in-a-lifetime that experience would be. For the full story and images, catch the October issue of African Diver, out on 1 October.

We received this information from Rainer Schimpf of Ocean Messengers (an NGO based in Port Elizabeth). Rainer is a committed conservationist who is active in ocean conservation in Algoa Bay and he is passionately concerned about lack of oversight and management of the ocean’s resources in Algoa Bay.

Here’s the text of his email to us:

Here are 2 pics of one of the oil tankers (two arrived on 19.03.10) and taken by Ocean Messengers NGO.

I am not sure who the genius was who came up with the idea of bringing 2 or 3 “normal” tankers into Algoa Bay, to be followed by an, apparently, fully loaded supertanker to offload the environmentally unfriendly load of (assumed to be) crude oil or fuel, from the supertanker to the 2 or 3 other tankers.

This may be done inside Coega harbour although it seems highly unlikely, because of space constraints needed to turn these huge ships safely. Regardless of where it will be done, it is a unnecessary risk for Algoa Bay as the risk of some form of pollution is relatively high. We understand that there is NO oil contingency plan in place, NO appropriate equipment (oil spill equipment) in close proximity to Algoa Bay and NO qualified personnel available to contain a spill.

One of the preconditions for the approval of the construction of Coega was the establishment of a Marine Mammal rehabilitation centre. This has not been fulfilled. In the event of an oil spill, SAMREC will partially meet this need and Bayworld (for financial reasons) would be unable to help. For the environment in Algoa Bay, a potential problem of epic proportions exists in the event of a spill.

Ocean Messengers will carefully monitor what is going on out at sea and inform MCM and the Municipality on posible risks as and when they arise.

Who is actually benefiting from an oil transaction like this? Does the Municipality get any payments? Do other NGOs get any money to be quiet? Is Coega only trying to test its (in)ability to handle oil and a possible spill?

The enormous risk taken by this action of offloading oil inside Algoa Bay threatens the following:

1st all Blue Flag Beaches
2nd all marine mammals
3rd all marine sea birds (including all penguins on St Croix and Bird Island as well as all Gannets)
4th Addo NP and Woody Cape
5th all inhabitants and users of the Algoa Bay .

I ask seriously who takes the responsibility and who’s “head will fall” is something goes wrong!

We are about to start Soccer 2010 and are possibly facing a devastating oil pollution before the Easter Holidays. Who is responsible for taking on this risk?

Consider this: the accident of the Exxon Valdes, a tanker accident at Prince William Sund Alaska, is more than 20 years old. Yet, the coastline beaches and marine annimals are still affected by oil pollution. This happened in a 1st world country: how will a huge oil pollution problem be handeled in Algoa Bay, South Africa?

I urge all parties involved to stop this nonsense and urge all interested parties and private persons to help Ocean Messengers to raise awareness of this issue and protect (the potential World Heritage Site) Algoa Bay.

We can be contacted via our web site: www.ocean-messengers.com

Thank you
Rainer Schimpf

Well, there you have it. We think it’s a potential problem and are staying in contact with Rainer to find out how this is being handled.

A ban on fishing around a colony of threatened penguins in South Africa has brought swift benefits to the beleaguered birds, marine biologists reported on Wednesday.

The population of the African penguin (Spheniscus demersus) fell by 60 percent between 2001 and 2009, driven by a plunge in anchovies and sardines, with climate change and purse-seine trawling fingered as the main culprits.

Of the 26,000 surviving pairs, the biggest colony is on St. Croix Island in Algoa Bay, on the eastern coast of South Africa.

There, experts tagged adult birds and monitored them before and after a ban on purse-seine fishing that took effect in a 20-kilometre (12-mile) radius from January 2009.

Before the ban, 75 percent of the penguins had to venture beyond 20 kilometres to find food, they found.

Three months after trawling was stopped, 70 percent of the birds were feeding within the 20-km zone, tucking into fish that now became available.

Fifty kilometers away at Bird Island, there is also a large colony of African penguins, but fishing there is still permitted. The birds are still doing long-haul swims to find food, the investigators found.

The finding is important because the St. Croix birds have decreased their daily energy expenditure by 40 percent, “enabling them to invest energy in reproduction,” said David Gremillet of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

It is too early to say whether the penguins will have more chicks and how many of the youngsters will survive until adulthood.

“It’s something that has to be studied over the long term,” Gremillet told AFP. The species is likely to be classified as “endangered” this month because of the sharp decline in the last decade.

The study, published by Britain’s Royal Society in the journal Biology Letters, provides the first evidence about how quickly a threatened species can rebound when it is given a little help.

“A marine protected area closed to fisheries can have immediate benefits for an endangered marine top predator,” say the authors.

Purse-seine fishing entails dropping a balloon-shaped net, or purse, to a certain depth and then raising it underneath shoals of fish that swim near the surface. The technique prevents the fish from swimming down to avoid capture.

Click here for source

Images by Petra and Rainer Schimpf (www.expert-tours.com)

These images were taken yesterday(8 February 2010) off Port Elizabeth by Petra and Rainer Schimpf from Expert Tours and they are expecting more sardines.

Important to know the difference of the Sardine Run event in 2010:

2010 is a really special Sardine Run year, not only because of the Soccer World Cup but mainly because we experience an “El Nino” par excellance in South Africa in 2010.

What does it mean for your Sardine Run trip: areas with little rain will have even less rain, areas with sufficiant rain will experiance flooding (already happening). Sea water temperatures will raise even higher where moderate to warm water occures.

This means for your Sardine Run trip 2010 there is a 99% probability that baitballs and sardine swarms will NOT occur in a timeframe from May until July in Kwazulu Natal! El Nino has shown in previous years that only on one or two days during an el Nino year Red Eyes (similar to sardines) were seen off Mboiti in the Eastern Cape.

The armada of sardines, dolphins, whales, sharks and orcas however stayed put in front of Port Elizabeth already from February on into July the last El Nino phenomen. Between 15 to 25 nauticle miles offshore in cristal clear water (see “Oceans” from Galatee Films this year in the cinemas!).

Already now, February 2010, the same phenomen repeats itself! For a couple of weeks now we have exactly what we predicted: sardines, dolphins, whales, sharks and orcas. All these predators hunt in deep water for sardines and shallow water for garfish and makarele.

This means that for your Sardine Run booking you need to act fast and book your trip in and around Port Elizabeth between February 2010 to May 2010 only.