AfricanDiver.com

by Bryan Hart

I always look at the prop wash in order to get an indication on what the water is doing when launching from Durban. On Saterday it looked like we had plotted a course into the Umgeni River mouth…. However - just as we were about to cancel the whole show, a decision was made to go have a look see……

I have to admit, I didn’t expect much, and was already groaning at the prospect of having to put my wetsuit in soap afterwards to get all the mud stains out of it! As we descended down the shot line, the viz was none existent - until 5m, the water opened up into 10m of viz. The water temp dropped to 18 degree’s though but still I could tell we were going to get in a long awaited dive!
We dropped the shot line on Nevs Ledge - there have not been too many dives on this reef as of yet so the area on top and further down the ledge are still unfamiliar to the group making each dive interesting.
Nevs Ledge that at its highest point, drops off approximately 6m onto the sand. There is an old danforth anchor and a rudder on the sand. This reef is best dived on Nitrox with a nice 30 percent mix giving you a good 30min on the bottom. Scattered around this area are pieces of pipe / metal - one can only speculate how something like a rudder and all this metal could could come to rest here.
There was a slight South to North current that was running, and the horizontal viz was an acceptable 10m.

As we hit the bottom, we were engulfed by approximately 200 plus spotted grunters. They were swimming in rapid bursts and I really expected to see the GW again!! The Grunter were all very large at around 60cm - As far as Iam aware there is no Grunter run that would explain why we saw this large shoal of grunter. The fish also appeared to be “slapping” one another on the sand - very interesting. There were also a few rays scattered around as well as a very large ship that came over us during the dive - nothing out of the ordinary really for NO.1!!!
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February is traditionally a non event in terms of diving off Durban as this coincides with the rainy season. However Iam sure all that dived on Saterday with us will take it and back me up in saying….

you only know if you go….

Gareth Morgan sent us this image from one of his dives in December on Nevs Ledge at a depth of 24m. Visibility was 10 metres and the water temp was 24 degree’s. The shark size was estimated to be 2.5 metres. AfricanDiver has had reports from numerous divers of increased shark activity on the Eastern coast of South Africa and Mozambique. AfricanDiver is currently investigating these reports as this type of activity is unusual. The findings will be published in a forthcoming issue of AfricanDiver.