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Published: November 16th 2011
I'm the first to admit, my pictures for these three dives are pretty crap. But hey, I saw at least 50 hammerheads at Protea Banks.
I'm back for my third visit to Shelly Beach, 120 km south of Durban...and trust me, this is not my last visit and dive here!
To spare you all the details, you can see below my three last postings about the area.
This time, I managed one dive at Protea Banks. We had to cancel the second dive as the waves were getting crazing once we left the water, and it would have been way too dangerous on the zodiac. Well, it gave me time to play 9 holes of golf at Selbourne.
The next day, I managed two dives at Aliwal Shoal, which is an hour drive north of Shelly Beach.
As usual, I'm staying at my prefered place on the South Coast, I name the Tropical Beach B&B...right on the beach in Shelly Beach.
So first day, Protea Banks, the sharks mecca of Africa and maybe further afield. Bear in mind, if you are "lucky", you could encounter the occasional Great White Shark while diving here...and there is
no cage. Sadly, I will need way more dives here to have the chance to spot one.
The fun part about Protea Banks is that every month bring you different types of sharks. I name hammerheads, raggies, zambezi, tiger, guitar...and the duskins. In my last post about Protea Banks, I named the Oceanic Black Tip, actually, these big guys are called Duskins sharks. Sorry for the little mistake!
November is the month of the....hammerheads. We had an average dive, encountering something like 50 to 75 of them. The day before, they saw 500 of them! This is to the point where the sun disappears behind a cloud of hammerheads!
There are actually two kinds of those big guys, the scalloped hammerhead, smaller and generaly in big groups...and the Giant Hammerhead, truly giant...We saw both types.
Since I've been fortunate enough to dive Darwin's Arch in the Galapagos, it's tough for me to get the WOW on those big guys. You will understand better if you open the link below to my Galapagos blog published three years ago.
Still, this dive was really fun. Slight trouble with the hammerheads, they are shy, and fast. We had
20 meters visibility, water at 22 degres. Basically, by the time I saw one or few coming, they saw us and had shoot out as fast as they came....still coming pretty close. But they never came as closed as the duskins for which I had to move my fins away if I wanted to avoid any physical encounter. This does explain the poor quality of the pictures .
So sorry, no great pics, but a wonderful time!
Sunday was the time of Aliwal Shoal. Ok, last time I dived here the dive was one of my 10 best ever...and the souvenir of it still haunts me. So this Sunday the dive was good, but nothing to compare...I'll have to come back!
What is fun here is that when you dive around the week-end, you dive with the locals, and these guys are all either divemasters, dive instructors, even course director...speak of experience!
I hope to come back here as early as the first few months of 2012. The people are nice, the food and wine lovely, and the dive, just out of this world!
So maybe not the best pictures, but still few amazing dives.
And yes, one day I plan to come to dive with Mari here around early July for the Sardine Run...don't know when, but this is top on the list. Google Sardine Run, and start to dream!
Happy divers...the year is not over yet...next dive in less than a month...in another highlight corner of the oceans!
And don't forget, get in touch with Aquaplanet to dive the area!
Huge waves...sorry no diving, but there is still amazing golf! Protea Banks...shark galore...and no cage! Aliwal Shoal...I don't want to go out of the water! Galapagos...Darwin's Arch...Hammerheads dreamland!
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anonymous
non-member comment
AMAZING!!... An encounter with a Great White is my worst nightmare... however, our friend Tino (he owns a dive school in Semporna) has in his diving bucket list to go to the 'sardine run' in SA to dive with Great whites with no cage... not for me, thanks!!!... I think 50 hammerheads are already more than I could handle :o)