In the Depths of the Fairest Cape
Posted By Sara-Lise Haith on 5 January 2007
Diving Cape Town
Diving Cape Town is truly extraordinary! I did notice however that certain safety aspects are a little different to other countries. My dive buddy was allowed to dive with no computer, she wasn’t sure if she had a depth gauge on her rental equipment and certainly did not follow the bottom time on a time piece. Her instructions were to follow the instructor, who was doing the deep dive training dive with one student, who she took to 34 metres, which is four metres beyond the allowed depth for that dive. I followed the instructor as I am unfamiliar with the dive site and kept my dive buddy close. All the rules being broken were certainly ringing in my head…. Other pleasure divers came to me after the second dive, and asked me for the dive profile, as they too were not wearing computers, did not know to what depth we had dived, and said the diving is a little different in Cape Town, we just follow in the instructor, use dive tables kindof, and sometimes watches and “sommer net” (which means something like “just because”.) If you are diving PADI tables you should be adding another 4m to your profile when diving in cold water, so in my humble opinion, the profiles dived where way out of the safety margin. However, the dive shop itself was very presentable with Scubapro rental gear in good condition, and a very professional reception desk. They advertised PADI instruction and had a decent retail section. The instructors were friendly and polite, didn’t smoke and were helpful and getting gear on and off board. I went home delighted with my first experience in the cool waters of the fairest Cape.
The weather worsened that afternoon, and my plans for a cage dive in Gaansbaai were thwarted.
Two Oceans Aquarium
However, if you want to dive close up and personal with sharks in Cape Town, and the weather is too bad to dive, there are other options. The Two Oceans Aquarium, based at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, has two tanks in which divers can dive, one is a kelp forest and the other is a shark tank. I decided to do both dives just for the experience.
The kelp tank is a small dive, enough for two/three divers only, and has kelp wafting around with all the typical fish one would find in a kelp forest including the cute little pyjama sharks. The temperature is cold, 16 deg C although that felt warm in comparison to my dive in False Bay the previous day! The shark tank is a separate environment, with 20 deg C water and no aquatic plants, and is full of stingrays, eagle rays, bat rays, and three ragged-tooth (grey nurse) sharks. There is also one huge turtle which looks about 100 years old, by its size, and he is slow, deliberate, and very cute. The predator tank, as it is called at the aquarium contains 2 million litres of seawater and is only 5 metres deep.
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