Shark nets inspection, but the sardines won.

On the beach at Umdloti(North of Durban)

Inspecting the Shark Nets

Out on the sea early in the morning to check shark nets with the Natal Sharks board.

In Bloemfontein South Africa where I live it may not get as cold as in other parts of the world, but I still don’t like it. Some of the days will start off at about -4C and peak at about 14C, it nearly never snows in Bloemfontein. So it may not be that cold but I’m a summer person.

We get frost regularly.

Lesotho about 150 km away does get some snow during the winter.

They get the snow and we get the cold winds!

For this reason, I try and flee to somewhere warmer, if only for a week. Durban is about 600 km away and much warmer than Bloemfontein. You can even swim in the sea! if you are a mad Bloemfonteiner.

SHARK SPOTTING? IN THE SHARK NETS!

One of the wonderful and exciting things we did was an early morning excursion with the KwaZulu-Natal Sharks Board. We planned to inspect the shark nets.

We were at Durban harbour at 06:00 just as the sun was rising out of the Indian Ocean. That was already beautiful enough for me. After a short introduction and some safety tips from the skipper, we were off into the sea.

Like many of you know it is wonderfully calm in a harbour until you hit the breakwater. The sea was not rough but the swells made the trip interesting.

The greatest shoal on earth was a bigger drawcard — for the sharks.

Unfortunately, we went out at the end of the annual sardine run along the South African east coast. It was a gamble because if the sardine run came north to Durban we were in for a spectacle of note. It is something that is difficult to predict and during our trip, the sardine run was nearly over and to the south of Durban.

This meant that there were no sharks or dolphins to be seen in the sea near Durban and there were also no sharks, or for that matter, any other fish caught in the shark nets.

The annual sardine run is the biggest biomass migration on earth. Even bigger, possibly, than the great wildebeest migration in East Africa. Some sources talk about billions of sardines.

Here are some videos of the sardine run by other people.

Sardine run with Peter Lamberti. 4:17min

Natural Wonders. 3:52min

The shark nets were “empty”

So we did not see any sharks, dolphins or whales and our skipper took us on a tour in the Durban harbour, it is the largest and busiest in Sub-Saharan African content.