Hawaii and Florida

In February this year we headed to Hawaii for the first white shark symposium. My wife presented her work on the white sharks of False Bay and the shark spotting program. What a successful conference with over 100 people attending. I off course spent most of my time diving! and surfing!









Here are some friends I ran into while exploring the underwater beauty of Hawaii and Florida...








Alison's presentation at Mote Marine lab in Florida! And getting to hang out with the mother of all shark research, Dr. Eugenie Clark

Picture says a thousand words...

What a busy year it's been so far! Time to get this blog running and catch up to the present. So what has Shark Explorers been up to lately? I am adding some pictures from the past 6 months with a caption to explain. I am clearly not somebody who likes writing, so I hope the pictures makes up for it....

Firstly I will update our inshore dives. These dives are the kelp forest diving, seven gill shark dives, cat sharks, spotted gully's, seals ect.

Gerhard Wagner from Shark Projects joins us for a dive with the 7Gill's amongst the kelp forests (April 2010).




Some random pictures of our kelp forest diving taken over the past 6 months...





















Diving amongst the kelp forest is good all year round, but visibility has been exceptional over the last three weeks and still is.

Pelagic dive....a must for all ocean addicts

The Pelagic trips we offer are certainly one of the most exciting experiences for ocean lovers. 30 Miles out at sea, the ocean doesn't get much "wilder" than this. It's like opening a lucky packet every time we head out and past Cape point. Whales, dolphins, seals, sharks, fish, birds, and "BLUE WATER"!



We managed to get out to the "blue's" five times in the last month. Two of the days will never be forgotten. The pictures don't do it justice!



Unfortunately blue sharks and mako sharks are of the most heavily fished shark species in our oceans, and what makes this worst is the fact that we just don't have enough information about these sharks to guarantee their survival in the future.



Hopefully more people will get to experience this awesome diving so that we can raise more awareness for these beautiful animals....and hopefully eliminate the thought of "out of sight, out of mind".

Seven gill sharks in numbers

We have been spending many days this year diving with the seven gill’s. Over the last 4 weeks we have been seeing an increase in the number of sharks in the area.


At the moment we are recording between 20 and 30 different sharks on a single dive! On our last dive we had one of the largest sevengill’s we have ever dived with, measuring in at about 3meters and weighing in at around 500pounds...she looked pregnant!


We also had a record 7 different shark species on a single dive! This is one of my favourite dives at the moment – the kelp forests and beautiful reef structures makes this a very rewarding experience.


The seals are always a hit and we often find ourselves amongst these playful animals when we dive this location.

Into the blue

The tuna season is in full swing and with it comes blue sharks and mako sharks. We did a trip out there on the 24th October to see what we could find.


The weather was good, the water was warm and the wildlife certainly didn’t disappoint us!


We had giant yellow fin tuna, sharks, dolphins and at least 8 different pelagic bird species (of which 3 were albatross).


The season lasts till the end December and sometimes even into January. The weather has to be good before we head out 30miles from land, but what an experience!

Borderhop – Mozambique 2009

Mozambique is a very special place with some incredible diving opportunities. We took on the road early October for a short 8-day-dive-as-much-as-u-can-expedition. We travelled 4500km in 8 days and got to dive 4 days on two different locations.


The first location was Sodwana bay. We joined Digger from blue juice for some sub tropical diving. On our first dive we ran into a Manta and a Ragged tooth shark! As we are sharky people, this was just what we were hoping for.


Our plan was to dive Sodwana and then go up to Ponta da ouro to dive the pinnacles and possibly run into some bull sharks, hammerheads and whale sharks.


Unfortunately the weather didn’t play in our favour and we had green, cold water with loads of jellyfish....but no sharks! The currents along the east coast can be very unforgiving. We still had a great time diving and surfing in Mozambique. We are already planning our next trip!

A busy year behind the camera

From Bassas to Cape town, from dusk till dawn, from white sharks to bull sharks, from 60minutes to Animal planet, from Anderson Cooper to Jeff Corwin....it doesn’t get much better than this!


2009 has been a challenging year for me behind the camera, but a very rewarding one indeed. I was lucky enough to be contracted as underwater cameraman on four high-end film productions about sharks.


White sharks were on the top of the shotlists and we (Mike Rutzen and myself) spent over 30hrs in the water with them this season. I can’t say much right now....but stay tuned for updates on the screening of these groundbreaking films. NOT TO BE MISSED!