Sardine Run 2008 - Mboyti

Hi there,

I am now into my second week back at work after travelling over to South Africa for the Sardine (at Mboyti just north of Port St John a few few hours south of Durban) I backed this trip with my own overland tour through Botswana and Namibia. It was an amazing experience with the first morning in the water swimmin with a Hump-back Whale, this was then followed by various days of great sarding bait ball action with over quiet days of doing open water shark dives or playing with either Bottle-nosed Dolphins or Common Dolphins. The best baitball action was one day where we had nearly everything going through the baitball, sharks (few different species), dolphins, Gannets, tuna, a Cape Fur Seal and A Brydes Whale lunge feeding within two metres of me .

I will in the course of the next week or two post up three other galleries from the trip, one for South Africa, Botswana and Namibia

I hope that you will enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed the experience of being there.

http://www.mattiovaska.com/layout/0001/gallery_view.cfm?g=82

Matti

PS tell me if the photos are dark as I am using a new computer at home and first impressions using a differnet computer to view the files is they look dark

http://www.mattiovaska.com

nice photos, wish I could enlarge them to see better...scott ps. looks like you got some really good ones!

Hey Matti

Glad to see you survived Walter. Did you miss the full lunge of the Bryde's or you just holding back to enter contests and publications?

That reminds we should start a south african thread. Hate to tell you this but those fish aren't sardines but roundhouse herrings...aka redeye. I think when you arrived the sardines were past you already.

The pics are processed dark... I think you can bring it up 20% easily.

I Just recieved an e-mail from Walter and last week he had a Bryde's Whale going through a baitball three times in really clean blue water, the day that i had with the Brydes whale it was overcast and the vis was probably ~10m. I did do an id check with walter on one of the balls so there is a mixture of Red eyes and sardines (maybe not on balls that I got reasonable phtos on). I will have to go through the photos again (maybe get something to properly calibrate the monitor). I also got some great photos in Nambia with Lions fighting from 3-20m from the car.

That was almost 3 weeks ago at Mboyti, we were all there. Walter was back at Umkomaas on the 20th doing the tigers. There were sardines mixed with the redeye, but usually in very small quantities due to the warmth of the water. The vast majority of the baitfish were roundhouse herring after June 16th. You can even see it in the behavior of the baitballs. We did visual checks and also caught some throughout the season to confirm. In the first week of July, there was so much redeye around, they were shimmering off on the surface. I don't think you were on the boat yet or was that you in the water when the Bryde's swam around our boat for like an hour?

Beautiful! It looks so exciting. I gotta get me there next year (hopefully)

I was there from the 25th june until the 5th July, the last day on the water (4th July) we didn't really have anything an just did an open water dive for sharks (nominally around 10 circling but they were constantly pealing off and new ones joing the train). The day we had the Brydes whale repeatly passing the bait ball and final going through it was on the 2nd of July.

I have uploaded my pics from Namibia and managed to get some great action shots of Lions fighting.

http://www.mattiovaska.com/layout/0001/gallery_view.cfm?g=83

Yes the 2nd was a great day for bryde's as well. So that was you on the boat with the girls. Sorry about that... bastard!

I have now uploaded my other galleries from the trip, South Africa, Namibia and Botswana though I still have to go through and reload the Sardine Run photos so they should be up by the end of the week. But in the mean time here are the new links.

http://www.mattiovaska.com/layout/0001/gallery_view.cfm?g=85

http://www.mattiovaska.com/layout/0001/gallery_view.cfm?g=84

http://www.mattiovaska.com/layout/0001/gallery_view.cfm?g=83

One thing is some of the AVI clips that I was given by one of the divers in my group showing the Bryde's whale going through thh bait Ball within 2m of me is something that I will never forget. I will have try and see if I can get any other footage from the trip.

The above water parts of the trip were on par with what I saw underwater, having lions fight just outside the car window was an amazing experience.

I have gone through the Sardine Run Gallery and reposted the gallery so they should be brighter now, there is also additional photos added.