The past few weeks have been hectic for those of us at Blue Wildeness and the loss of our internet for a while added to a computer glitch meant a lack of blog updates.
The conditions have improved significantly since the last update and we have been enjoying fantastic visibility (between 15m and 40m). The water temperatures have been consistently above 23 celsius (in fact reaching 26 celsius for the most part). There has still been a thermocline but this seems to have had less and less an effect on the tiger tribe. We are seeing up to five tigers at a time now and some of the old regulars have returned."Snowflake" was around in early December and now we have "Mathilda" back. There are at least two others who are returns from last year.
The blacktip numbers are up to between 40 ad 60 per dive but the duskies are down to one or two. Another strange feature is that the raggies are still here - we probably owe this to the remaining thermocline but only time will tell. The whale sharks have been slow and we are seeing the odd hammerhead and bull shark.
All in all fantastic to have things return to normal after a long break. We were very fortunate to have some amazing people with us over the holiday period and it was even more amazing to be able to show them our marine team at their best.
Dan Rawson (our Botswana crocodile and hippo - underwater man) and his family spent some time with us and it was great to show Dan our tribe.
The newly wed Cooper's (Jon and Sarah) from the UK also had a great time with the blacktips and tigers in some great visibility and calm seas (Jon is the generous man who has donated a few D70's, lenses and housing to our shark identification programme, Jon has also just donated a D200, lenses, strobe and housing - another Subal!! - to the programme after our last "Goodwill camera" got eaten).
Sijmon De Waal and Debbie Millin were back for a week or two and we had a great time with Sijmon who brought back a 10.5mm lens for the "Goodwill" camera collection.
As the Shark Park team gear up for an exciting season so do the Shark Route teams get ready for the activity at other locations along our amazing coastline. Follow their activity at http://sharkroute.blogspot.com
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2 comments:
After so many bad news, this is fantastic news.
I am so glad "Mathilda" is back - all she has to do now is to stick around. I NEED to see her again, as well as all the other girls!!
I am planning to be back on March 15 - that is less than 2 months!!
Long live all the Aliwal Shoal sharks!!!
Da old Wolf
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