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After having spent time in the water with Raggies and Hammerheds discribed in our last Blog post “RAGGIES”, we finally decided to embark on a long six week road trip along the African South East coast line, hoping to film Bull sharks, Tiger sharks and the Hammerhead shark migration. The 5000km (3000mile) trip, took us from our home office in Somerset West to Champagne Castle (Drakensberg, South Africa), Ponta do Ouro (Mozambique), Sodwana Bay, Aliwal Shoal and Protea banks (South Africa), incorporating some gorgeous topside videography opportunities, as well as diving with our majestic sharks along the South East coast of Africa.

Our first overnight stop was in the small town of Hanover, where we stayed in the delightful Boutique Guest House overnight. We then drove on to Champagne Castle Hotel in the Drakensburg mountains where we had celebrated our honeymoon, just a short 35 years earlier. It is still fabulous and is so well maintained. The meals are oh so YUMMY, 5 star plus, they sure do have some amazing chefs! What a totally stunning area. Too bad its so far away from our home.

From there we travelled to our next overnight spot at Kosi Bay Casitas, so that we could have an early entry through the Kosi Bay, Mozambique Border post.

Passing the South African Border was a breeze, getting all our camera and dive gear cleared by customs, was no issue at all. Then the Kosi Bay, Mozambique Customs, were insistent that we needed to pay import duty on all our gear, even though we clearly stated that we were not importing the goods and would be returning with them in two weeks time, they are in fact our personnel goods. We kept as calm as possible and were just about to tell them not to worry, we will cancel our trip to Mozambique, when finally the customs officer accepted the fact that we did not need to pay any customs duty and that the goods were actually our personnel belongings. This experience is very frustrating and off putting and unfortunately has left us with a bad taste, for any future trips into Mozambique.

We drove onto Ponta Do Ouro, where we stayed at Planet Scuba and dived with the very professionally run Gozo Azul. Huge thanks to Natalie and her fantastic team!

We repeatedly went to Pinnacles dive sight and saw many Bull and Tiger sharks, but they just were not curious enough to investigate us. The life on the reefs was quite impressive and we saw a number of Modula rays and massive Groupers.

Heading back into South Africa over the border was fortunately smooth and easy. We arrived in Sodwana bay and stayed at Occi Lodge and dived with the very well run Da Blu Juice dive operator. An Important note:Remember to take insect replant! And for diving and accessing the Sodwana bay area, make sure you have your Exemvelo KZN Wildlife, Rhino Club permit. Diving in this area was quite pretty. We did not see many sharks but the interaction with Dolphins was quite phenomenal. Unfortunately, the daily sightings of Whale Sharks is now a thing of the past along this coast line. There is a no take zone, that has been implemented and we salute all further conservation needs that are being assessed and implemented in the area.

Next, after meeting and chatting to Michelle Carpenter in Sodwana bay, about the incredible research work she has done on the Shortfin Devil Rays in Aliwal Shoal area, we booked the Devil Ray conservation dives with ScubaXCursion and drove on, down the East Coast of South Africa, to Scottburgh (Aliwal Shoal area). We stayed at The Premier Resort Cutty Shark hotel, which is right next to the amazing ScubaXCursion dive centre. Diving over the days that followed, we were fortunate to see and film the Shortfin Devil Rays at their cleaning stations.

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Time was running out and the prospect of seeing the massive Scalloped Hammerhead migrations further down the east coast of South Africa, urged us to hit the road again where we spend one awful night at St Michaels Sands Hotel, in Margate. The less said the better, but in terms of accommodation and food, this was the Low light of our trip, by far!

First thing in the morning, we moved on to African Dive Adventures and Roland’s Diver Villa in Margate.

Here we had hoped to finally film the full Hammerhead migration that we had had a preview of on our previous visit, just three months earlier. Conditions were variable as expected, as Summer was only just starting to roll in and we had to carefully select which days to head out onto Protea Banks reef.

While the Raggies were still in the area and there were plenty of Oceanic Black Tip shark, the Hammerheads migration evaded us. This migration was seen in the area just two weeks after we had left:-)…………….. We will just have to try again next year.

A huge thanks to Roland, Renier and Spike for being such a professional team.

It is such a blessing to be able to dive and film the array of amazing animal that live in South Africa's coastal water, not the least of which is its rapidly diminishing shark population. That being said, The diving on this trip was hard work. Only two to three 60 minute dives a day, but the combination of a

5:30am wake-up, the shore entry and exit with the boat through waves and surge , swimming furiously in current so as to attain the optimum depth and position on the reefs to gain entry into small caves, pulling yourself back up onto the boat after each dive, bobbing around on the rubber duck 7km off shore during the 1 hour surface interval between dives, to outgas Nitrogen and carrying 35kg of filming gear back and forth, resulted in physical exhaustion that had us asleep by 7pm, most nights, just after finishing with charging batteries, washing gear, transferring and backing up almost 500MB of video data each day and prepping for the next days diving and filming. Ocean currents were strong on almost every dive and on one dive in particular, over Protea Banks, we drifted 7km during a 62 minute dive.

Mother nature too is unpredictable as always, not only is it impossible to say if the sharks will be there or not and if ther are, if they will come close enough to film, but the weather conditions can change dramatically during a dive. We entered the water on one dive with perfect surface conditions, sun shining and flat water, only to pull ourselves back onto the boat, 60 minutes later, in the middle of the worst storm we had seen on the entire trip. This is why it it critical to be out on the water with an operator who is knowledgable, competent and professional and we were so fortunate to have exactly those people looking out for us throughout this trip. Thanks so much to you all!

…AND…… Once again, our underwater production gear performed flawlessly. With over 200 hours of bumpy boat work and 85 hours down to depths of 35 meters underwater on the trip, our Keldan Video lights, Nauticam housings and Dive and See monitors all continued to function perfectly. Man, it pays to have the most reliable gear in the industry.

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It was finally time to head back home, with one last stop between Margate and Somerset West (outside Cape Town), at the upmarket Celtis Country Lodge. What an unexpected and welcome surprise this was. 5 star accommodation and food, a highly recommended overnight stop.

We arrived home feeling privileged at having been able to see more of our country than many South African have and to have had the opportunity to explore the beauty of Southern Africa's South East coastal waters. At the same time, we could not help being sad at once again witnessing how the Shark populations are dwindling and can only hope that the scientists and conservationists get all the support they need, so that the future of our shark populations is protected.