Southern Africa Holiday Highlights
08 January 2008

Trip report by Jim Bruce

I'm uneasy about the practice of attracting sharks to divers by feeding them. The main argument against this is that it changes the sharks feeding habits but the process is also very undignified. However I signed up for the shark dive anyway, persuaded by the promise that there was no direct feeding, only 'chumming' (putting blood and oil in the water, not big chewy bits).

Upon arrival at the dive site, 50 km south of Durban, the crew started the chumming process. The smell of the concoction used is unlikely to ever be bottled for use as an air freshener and this, combined with the huge three metre swell, created perfect sea-sickness conditions. Those of us who were unaffected jumped in 30 minutes later and found both dusky and blacktip sharks in abundance. These were fast and agile beasts up to about 1.5 metres. However it was tiger sharks that we hoped to see, and patience was required. After an hour at six metres the number of divers started to diminish and after 90 minutes there were four of us left. A female tiger then made her entrance. At 2 or 2.5 metre long she was mightily impressive, with unmistakable vertical stripes on her flanks. There was no question who was the boss and the other sharks showed due deference. She cruised effortlessly back and forth in the chum trail for 10 minutes before concluding that there was no free lunch and disappearing. After 111 minutes my bottle was dry anyway and I returned to the RIB.

A tiger shark and I

Mozambique is becoming a playground for the South Africans. More accurately, for the white Afrikaners, many of whom are based in Johannesburg area. I was in Inhambane which is actually about 1,000 km west of Johannesburg but that doesn't stop the South Africans driving all the way there (or flying their own planes there, in the case of two different blokes I dived with).

The attraction of Mozambique for me was to try and see manta rays and whale sharks. The mantas are fairly common and are in permanent residence, while the whale sharks turn up in the summer to hoover up the plankton.

After a couple of reasonable dives on the house reef we went out to Manta Reef the next day. The South African style of diving is as a large group with everyone on the RIB staying together and led by a divemaster (who has an SMB). This is very restrictive to the free-roaming British diver, especially as every other diver encountered only had PADI OW or AOW. The advantage is that staying together does reduce the risk of divers surfacing away from the boat cover.

Surprisingly our shoal of divers didn't seem to bother the mantas, as one turned up five minutes after we got wet. It looked more like it was flying than swimming, with its huge wings flapping slowly and effortlessly. This propulsion was very effective though, as it moved quickly and with amazing grace. It made several runs, back and forth across the same cleaning station, although for my money it was having dinner, not a wash and scrub up. After awhile it moved to the edges of our visibility and we averted our attention back to the reef. As soon as we did this it was back again, apparently liking the attention.

We managed a second dive on Manta Reef two days later. This time it was even better with two of them gliding together. They were also much bigger—the largest was 5 m. Despite the size they were as graceful as the smaller one and flew together in synchronisation.

Between these amazing dives we stayed on the house reef. This reef had lots to look at but paled in comparison to watching mantas. It rapidly became frustrating that the dive centre was unwilling to go out to the "far reefs", despite being only 20 minutes away on the RIB. A concerted effort by me did see one further success, when they acrimoniously agreed to take me out to Pandane Reef.

Pandane Reef usually has strong currents present and post-dive we guessed the tide was running at 3 knots. I have only done a handful of drift dives before and none of them had a current as strong as this. If the manta dives were like a Sunday afternoon drive in the country, this was like Friday night street racing. We ducked in and out of the current, mostly along the base of a wall. Shoals and individual pelagic 'game' fish (trevally, barracuda, jacks) were whizzing about all over the place. It was alive and you knew bigger true game fish such as marlin and wahoo lived there and couldn't have been far away. A shoal of two dozen devil rays also passed overhead, silhouetted against the surface light.

To finish the dive off we dropped down through a vertical entrance to a large cavern. Inside all was still and a large green turtle was having a kip. By then our no-stop time was almost done but as I tried to leave the cavern a sudden powerful inflow of water not only stopped me in my tracks but forced me down onto the bottom. After a mild panic attack the current fortunately ended as abruptly as it had started and I whizzed out and started the ascent to the RIB.

This was the last dive of 2007 and also the best one of the year. Some more drift dives are now in order I think… Portland Bill on a spring tide anyone?

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