December 2020

DIVING … AND MORE DIVING

As mentioned in our previous post, we’ve visited Sodwana Bay early in December 2020 for a week of scuba diving (for Berto) … I was lazing around on the beach and made frequent visits to the local beach shop 😉

Refresher – Where is Sodwana Bay?

Sodwana Bay is in South Africa on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast, between St. Lucia and Lake Sibhayi.

Scuba dives here will include dives on beautiful reefs (which is believed to be about 80 000 years old!) The reefs are colourful and is home to 1 200 species of fish.

Colourful fish on the reefs of Sodwana Bay

The dive sites are named according to their distance in miles from the launch site:

  • 2 Mile Reef is the most popular one and the site that is dived most often, while
  • 7 Mile Reef is considered as one of the best dive sites in the world

Berto’s dives for the week included a couple of dives on 2 Mile-, 7 Mile- and 8 Mile Reef. On one of their dives, while on route to one of the dive sites, they’ve encountered dolphins – a really spectacular moment to see them in their own habitat.

A Moray eel – they are normally hiding in shallow water among reefs and rocks
The Moray eel is a snake-like fish with a slender elongated body and poorly developed fins

Here are a series of photo’s that Berto took on his different dives. Most of these photo’s were taken at 2 Mile Reef, where the average depth is between 10m – 18m.

Visibility was great at 2 Mile Reef
A beautiful Nudibranch
The average water temperature was around 20 degrees

As mentioned earlier, the reef is home to 1 200 species of fish. Coral Divers mentioned in their dive briefing that this compares great to the Great Barrier Reef (where you will find 1 800 species) … but keep in mind that Sodwana Bay’s reef is less than 1/10th of the area!

Perfectly heart-shaped coral. It’s remarkable that there’s not a lot of coral bleaching like at some of the other dive sites across the globe
A wonderland of coral reefs
Crayfish hiding in-between the coral and rocks

Surprisingly, there were quite a lot of divers while we were at Sodwana Bay (it was still pre-holiday season). An average of 8 – 10 divers per boat was the norm for every day.

Divers enjoying themselves at 2 Mile Reef

Berto enjoyed these dives tremendously. It was probably the best way to end an otherwise difficult year where we were most of the time housebound due to Covid-19.

Stunning view at 2 Mile Reef at Sodwana Bay