I wanted to share these images by Kieron Dunn (UCT Zoology honors studant) on Dassen Island. They show the real inhabitants and the stark beauty of the island.

African penguins at home on their island

Kelp gulls own the skies

Dassen sunset

Flocks of terns cover the shore line in the evenings

The beach at Huisbaai, Dassen Island

Leaving huisbaai

Rabbits everywhere !

More often occupied by rock pigeons and rabbits than people

I received this email a few weeks ago “Hello!  My name is Myfanwy Rowlands. I’m currently traveling on a diving and marine educational scholarship sponsored by Rolex and the Our World Underwater Society.  I was hoping to see whether my volunteering with your organization would be a possibility?…….” I had heard of the programme and was very happy and honored to be involved. How could I say no?,a chance to show some one around the city and ocean I enjoy so much, maybe she would be able to keep up!

A little history from the Our world – Underwater society scholarship’s website -
Each year the society awards year-long scholarships designed to expose a qualified young person to a wide range of experiences in various marine-related fields. With continued generous funding from the Rolex Corporation, the awards are now known as the Rolex Scholarships.

For 2010, three Rolex scholarships will be offered: one in Australasia, one in North America, and one in Europe. Each Rolex Scholarship provides a hands-on introduction to underwater and other aquatic-related endeavours for a young person considering a career in an underwater-related discipline. One scholar is selected from each of the three regions and each scholar spends approximately one year working side by side with current leaders in underwater fields. Each scholar travels primarily within his or her region, but may have opportunities throughout the underwater world. The range of experiences may include active participation in field studies, underwater research, scientific expeditions, laboratory assignments, equipment testing and design, photographic instruction, and other specialized assignments.

I wanted to give her a chance to see and meet as many people as possible, needless to say she hit the ground running. She arrived from Tasmania after a 23 hour journey only to find herself being taken to Dassen Island, a place she had never heard off and certainly not on the tourist maps. Here is what Von has had to say about some of her experiences with me in Cape Town so far (Source) -

Wow!  First blog update in awhile, sorry — you can blame Steven Benjamin, my awesomely over-achieving local Cape Town host, for that.  We’ve been on a whirlwind tour of Cape Town’s aquatic environments, and I’m going to post about them individually in the next few days!  Steven runs Animal Ocean, an all-inclusive ocean eco-tourism operation that offers personalized outdoor marine and aqua experiences.  Spearfishing, freediving, shark diving, photographic excursions — you name it, if it’s in the ocean in the Cape Town area, Steve’s probably an expert in it.   Let’s just say that today I had a bunch of 1.5m-long cowsharks swimming around my head, and I’m absolutely loving life.

29 Jan 2010

Right!  So I’ve got some backlogs to do, starting with the day I arrived in Cape Town, South Africa.  I was met at the airport by local dive and underwater guru Steven Benjamin, who operates Animal Ocean, which is an all-encompassing marine eco-tourism operation.  We had some breakfast, and then Steve whisked us off to Dassen Island with 25 University of Cape Town’s 2010 Zoology Honours students.  Dassen Island is a special place – it’s managed by the Nature Conservation, South Africa’s government environmental agency.  No one is allowed on the island without a permit, so we were very, very lucky to be able to go.  The island itself is a haven for bird life, including penguins!  The history behind the penguins of Dassen Island is tumultuous; because their eggs were harvested aggressively until the 1960s, their numbers are reduced now to less then 10% of what they were at the turn of the century

Dassen Island research accomadation tucked behind the dunes

Myfanwy Rowlands at Dassen Island

True Dassen Island locals....

Penguin wall

This picture shows the Dassen Island lighthouse and a portion of the penguin wall that was constructed years ago and encircles the entire island.  It was built to keep the penguins from building their nests too far inland and facilitate easier collection of their eggs.  It’s now breached in numerous places and the penguins have no trouble getting to the interior of the island.

1 Feb 2010

Steven Benjamin (my Cape Town guide and owner of Animal Ocean) and I returned from Dassen Island on Sunday, March 31st.  On Monday, Steve took me along on one of his dive charters to Duiker Island, home of a very friendly colony of Cape fur seals.

Cape Fur seal leaps from the water at Houtbay

They were magic to dive with, but seals always make me feel like an absolute robot underwater.  After the dive, Steve took us snorkeling to a little rocky beach just beyond the point of Hout Bay Harbor, because he wanted to show us the site of an abalone poaching operations.  The picture below shows the pile of empty abalone shells we found there.

A pile of poached and scraped abalone shells.

What happens is, abalone divers go outside the harbor in little rubber duck boats, collect the abalone and bring them to this beach, which is hidden from sight and around the point from Haut Bay slipway.  The poachers unload their illegally harvested abalone on the beach, stacked up in piles, before taking their now empty boats back to the slipways of Hout Bay Harbor, which are monitored for illegal abalone fishing.  Then the poachers hike over the point down to the beach, and carry the illegal harvest of abalone meat overland, thereby avoiding getting caught.  It’s quite a racket.

2 Feb 2010

The one day that should of been 6  !!!!

What an amazing day February 2nd was.   I’ll take you through the pictures below and explain the chronology that way. I tagged along with Steve Benjamin (Animal Ocean) on a dive charter to dive with a natural aggregation of seven-gill sharks, or cowsharks (as they’re called in Cape Town) just past Miller’s Point near Simons Town.  It’s an unbelievable spot, as the cowsharks are gathered there in significant numbers and they’re VERY curious… not at all shy of divers.  It was fantastic!  We had at least 7 sharks around us at any one time, and we reckon we saw about 20 total.

Sevengill Cowshark - Image by Sjimon de Waal

After the cowsharks, we stopped at the boat ramp at Millers Point to see the snoek boats coming in.  The picture below is of a man counting the snoeks as he tosses them in a bucky to be carried to market.

A good days catch of snoek

Then we stopped by Muizenburg beach, and were just in time to see the Treknet fishermen bringing in a fresh catch of yellowtail kingfish!  This type of fishing is a bit different from your average industrial trawler or purse-seiner…the whole community gets out on the beach to help pitch the nets.  It was fun to watch.

Trek net fishing on fish hoek beach

We left Muizenburg Beach and drove up Boyes Drive to the overlook of Muizenburg in False Bay.  From there, you can see Seal Island (remember that AWESOME series in Planet Earth that shows great white sharks breaching?  That’s Seal Island), as well as the entire stretch of Muizenberg Beach.  To our unbelievable luck, the Shark Spotter on duty, (her name is Vivian) spotted  a great white just moments after we arrived!

Von and Vivian watch a great white shark swimming in the surf zone

It was unbelievable.   I’ve shown the picture below fully scaled out and then zoomed in to give you an idea of perspective – the shark was about 2.5m-3m long.  The Shark Spotter program is a wonderful alternative to shark nets (which can be found all along the eastern beaches of South Africa, in Durban).  Shark nets “work” because they kill everything in their path, shark and fish and dolphin and seal alike.  The Shark Spotter program works, and eliminates the unnecessary slaughter that shark nets unleash.

And that was (most of) our day!  It was banner.  The days have been packed, and I’m still catching up – more to come.

3 Feb 2010

February 3rd was the day that Steve Benjamin (Animal Ocean) and I went up into the mountains to meet Jeremy Sheldon, Ph.D. student at the University of Cape Town.  Jeremy is doing his Ph.D. thesis on the streams and rivers of the Bain’s Kloof region, in the mountains Northeast of the Cape.  He’s comparing the ecology of streams that have been invaded with trout (100 years ago they were brought over and introduced for game fishing) to that of those streams and rivers where trout haven’t infiltrated.

Jeremy Sheldon happy doing field work

Tierhok Rivier

A gorgeous, gorgeous day of fieldwork in a beautiful place.  I’m now seriously considering studying river otters along with sea otters.

7am Friday morning saw Andrew, Wikus, Steve, Grant and myself kitting up at Ysterfontein and heading out. It was the first real calm day after a few days of SE. I had heard the tail had been around the island the previous day and wanted to see if they were still there.

We headed to the island and spent the morning jumping on scattered bird activity that wasnt great. Grant was very keen to get one and dived hard. He did manage to get a spear into one but it came off.
We headed to the west side and found all the commercial boats catching snoek. Steve shot a nice hottie on a shallow bank….but no tail. At about 12 we headed to the inside of the island again. What we found was great. The tail were swimming north into the wind 100m from the shore. We started doing drifts south with the wind down the side of the island. I was dropping the guys near the birds and they swam to them and dived knowing the tail will be below. The team quickly learned that shooting tail isn’t easy. The guys hit 6 shoals in a row seeing hundreds of fish swimming all over the place.
It was hilarious from the boat watching everyone pop up after a dive shouting with excitement. MANY lessons were learned and alot of growth for the divers
It was a great day and Im so glad that every one got 1 fish in the boat, well done guys you earned it
Steve

We watched this Humpback whale breaching early in the morning in the chilly waters off Dassen Island

A mixed team of freedivers, spearfishermen and photographers headed to Dassen Island for the day. We had great reports from the previous day so expectations were high and we were not disappointed.

We left the slipway and found a mixed pod of Dusky and Heaviside dolphins playing together. Unfortunately the vis was quite bad but everyone enjoyed the dolphins company

We headed to some reefs near the island were we had 20m vis. The guys drifted over the reef watching yellowtail and bonito swimming past.

Some of the team opted to SCUBA on an unbelievable offshore blinder. The pinnacle just breaks the surface and drops to 40m rapidly with narrow cracks running down its flanks. An amazing dive

We had a great day spent at Dassen Island, 100km north of Cape Town on the west coast and 10km Offshore.

We jumped in with a pod of Dusky dolphins half way to the island. The vis was a shocking 1m but we still had dolphins between our legs. We went greeted with great 12m vis around the island and it didn’t take us long to get in and hunt for a hottentot. We found 4 pyjama sharks in huise baai, but they didn’t stick around. On a SCUBA dive on the south corner of the island Falk and myself watched 3 houndsharks (Mustilis mustilis) interacting. It appeared to be one large female being trailed by 2 small males. Crayfish were in every crevice, I cant wait for the season to open. Later on whilst searching for big hottentot I had a pair of yellowtail swim up to me. One swam away and the other was just eaten for supper.

A great day on the sea.

Read what Morten wrote about the day here

First a short clip of the dusky dolphins we encountered and then a few images from the day……

Morten on the inside edge of Dassen Island

Dassen Island in glassy, flat conditions

Hagfish coming in to eat a pilchard

Pelicans on the Island, watch out penguins and cormerants

Hottentot in kelp forest

The conditions were good for day’s adventure out to Dassen Island.

The Island lies 10km off shore of Ysterfontain on the West Coast. The Island has a lighthouse and a small jetty with a few houses but is mostly home to colonies of penguins, cormorants, and seals. There are a number of shipwrecks strewn across shore line making this a foreboding but exiting place to dive.

The fist creatures we encountered were the tiny and playful Heaviside dolphins as well as hundreds of cormorants all chasing bait fish. We moved behind the island and there we found the yellowtail and snoek, with both Tai and me having hook-ups. I quickly jumped in the water and shot a few yellowtail as tai threw a spinner over my head.

Later I explored the deeper pinnacles looking for big hottentot but really only found playful seal.

Lighthouse, penguins and rock scape of Dassen

It was a great day of fun