FREEDIVING & SNORKELING ARTICLES

Despite their small stature, nudibranchs cause great excitement amongst the diving community of the Cape Peninsula. Their vibrant colours and fascinating physiology lodge these gastropod mollusks as firm favourites on many freediving photographers’ lists. Gas Flame Nudibranch Nudibranchs can be found in oceans across the globe, with new species discoveries taking place regularly. There are

Despite being known most affectionately as puppies of the sea, there is more to seals than their playful demeanour and charismatic presence. In oceans across the globe, seals are a vital component of the food web and contribute to essential roles as keystone species within marine environments. Seals are grouped into three distinct families, namely:

Sea sponges are a curious group of organisms that have long since raised questions regarding their classification as either plants or animals. Originally thought to be plants due to their sessile nature, sponges have subsequently been reclassified as animals due to their lack of plant vascular systems or ability to create their own food through

Basket stars (Astrocladus euryale) are an intricately beautiful type of brittle star, mostly seen on sea fans and sometimes clinging to rocky outcrops. Basket stars and brittle stars are closely related to starfish and have a similar shape with a central disc and arms extending from it. Basket stars have 10 arms with numerous tiny

The Cape knifejaw (Oplegnathus conwayi) is the cold water equivalent of the tropical Parrotfish. While adult Cape knifejaws are dark grey, nothing close to a rainbow coloured Parrotfish, their juveniles are bright yellow with black vertical bands. Their teeth fuse together to form beak-like structures much like parrotfish. Its ‘beak’ has no doubt been the

The spotted gully shark (Triakis megalopterus), also referred to as the sharptooth houndshark, is a shark we are always excited to find in the kelp forests around Cape Town. We mostly encounter these houndsharks in shallow inshore areas particularly around Waters Edge, Shark Alley and Millers Point and around Buffels Bay in Cape Point Nature

One of the top Cape Town tourist attractions is the penguin colony at Boulders Beach in Simons Town. We spend a lot of time in this area with our snorkelers and freediving students, especially at Windmill Beach which flanks the penguin colony on the southern side and Waters Edge which flanks it on the northern

Starfish or to use the correct, up-to-date, name ‘Sea stars’ are much loved star-shaped echinoderms. Like most people we use the two names interchangeably. There are about 1900 species of sea stars in the world’s oceans ranging from the tropics to the polar regions. They are found between the intertidal zone down to 6000m deep.

South Africa has five species of abalone which is locally referred to as perlemoen. Haliotis midae is the biggest of the South African abalone and most commonly seen. The others are Haliotis parva, Haliotis spadicea, Haliotis queketti and Haliotis speciosa. Abalone are marine gastropod molluscs or in simpler terms a large marine snail. The name