Yesterday at lunchtime I received a phone call from a friend to let me know that there was a lot of bird activity at Chapmans Peak. I drove out for a look and saw a huge baitball of fish up against the side. In the pic below you can clearly see the baitball in the centre of the picture, and in fact the entire dark mass above and to the left is also baitfish. The water was looking clean and we could see a few dolphins and seals smashing through the baitball and grabbing mouthfuls of fish.
I rushed home, grabbed my camera and dive kit and managed to be in the water within an hour of having first seen the shoal. Unfortunately it was too late for any predator action, as the dolphins had left and a few stuffed looking seals were swimming around lazily. Still a baitball in Hout Bay is not a common sight and I jumped in regardless. The shoal turned out to be anchovies and there were quite a few of them. The shoal was probably 60m long and 10m wide and it was incredible just to swim underneath it into the dark shadow and just watch the millions of fish moving in complete harmony. There were also a lot of Hottentot and Galjoen swimming around and I think they were feeding on the injured anchovies.
All in all it’s just brilliant to see this kind of activity in Cape Town. Who knows, someday we may yet have our own “sardine run”! Some more pics can be seen at my Flickr Site.
