by admin | May 24, 2017 | Dive Inn
Cape Town Nudibranch finds
Cape Town Nudibranch finds on our nudibranch hunting trips can provide some nice critters to photograph.
But to find most of them you would need to go very slow. A very good idea is too dive often as well. This will ensure that your sighting possibilities will increase, hopefully.
Dive Inn Cape Town also offer Specialised Nudibranch hunting scuba dives. So book us and we can try and show you the small stuff that you miss. You can check most of our photos out on FaceBook or Instagram.
At the moment we are still able to get between 10 and 20 different species of Nudibranchs per dive. Nudibranchs is also known as sea slugs but we will not go to deep into the different species of slugs which can be found all over.
As in previous blogs we did mention about over 80 different species we can find in Cape Town waters. However every now and then a species pop out we do not know. Like the Opera house, which have been seen every now and then. We were lucky to have spotted one in January last.
A new species we have been seeing is not named yet. But for now we just call it an Orange Corambe sp.
Unknown
Hopefully in the near future we have it described by a scientist. It is orange, quite small and live on Bryozoans or that’s here we have been spotting them. (chaperia spp)
Then of course we find Nudibranchs which have not been seen in a long long time.
We had some great Eubranchus and Doto’s in Cape Town Nudibranch finds. It is a shame that most of these unusual finds are so small. This probably is good in a way as then we can find them on a nudibranch hunting trip.
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by Carel van der colff | Jan 15, 2016 | Dive Inn
Dive Inn Cape Town Peak Season
WOW what a season. Loads of tourists visiting from the states and United Kingdom (mostly cricket supporters) touring and diving in our beautiful city of Cape Town.
Dive Inn Cape Town Peak Season blog is a quick view of what we were up to with some pics of where we have been.
Diving was a bit on the down side with us only being able to do 14 dives in the month. Tours were much more in demand with us doing Cape Peninsula tours, Table Mountain, Kirstenbosch, Constantia winelands, Stellenbosch winelands and even 2 trips to Gansbay / Hermanus for shark cage diving.
Table Mountain
On our dives we saw loads of Nudibranchs but did not find any of the resident seven gill cow shark. They have been scarce for a while now. However we were lucky to have spotted the shy gully shark on the dives which helped as a shark dive just makes it more fun. The best is that most of our dives were still done in the warmer waters of False Bay and Walker Bay with temperatures of 16 to 20 degrees Celsius and viz from 5-15 meters. The Atlantic dives had good viz but with 8-10 degrees, BBBRRRRRR.
Orange Lined Nudibranch
The only courses we done was PADI discover Scuba Diving and refreshers. The rest was Nudibranch Hunting.
We started early on most of the Cape Peninsula tours to miss the seasonal traffic jams there was hectic lines at Boulders Beach and Cape Point Gate. We even changed the tour routes around to miss the big coaches. Table Mountain unfortunately had ques all the time, even with our pre-booked tickets. I got some good exercise in as I needed to park the touring vehicle miles away from the cable car and running up and down to fetch it in very hot weather. More exercise at Cape Point with hikes up to the light house, erected in 1860. There are about 140 steps to the top of the lighthouse after riding up with the Flying Dutchman Funicular. (more…)
by Carel van der colff | May 20, 2015 | Dive Inn
Nudibranchs
I’m absolutely mad about nudibranchs, and scuba diving in cape town gives me the opportunity to hunt for these amazing creatures.
Cape Town’s cold waters may not have the many colourful fish found on coral reefs. Instead, we have incredibly colourful reefs, which are perfect for a macro fanatic.
So, what is a nudibranch? Hmmm, short and sweet, it’s a slug – a sea slug. But not your common dull garden-variety slug – no, nudibranchs are usually rather colourful and attractive, showing incredible variety. Nudibranch itself means “naked gill”, because the gills are on the outside of the body.
And while we all commonly refer to all sea slugs as nudibranchs, technically they are only one type of sea slug – there are many others!
GasFlame Nudibranch – Bonisa nakaza
In Cape Town we have around 75 known species, according to our naturalist and nudibranch fundis. For most of them we have nice common names. We also have the scientific names for those who like to tick off species lists.Guido Zsilavecz has written a book “Nudibranchs of the Cape Peninsula of False Bay”, which shows most of the known species. While in Georgina Jones’ book “A Field Guide to the Marine Animals of the Cape Peninsula” the more common ones are shown. And in-between all the other animals found in our 8-18 degree waters.
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