I dream of Africa

In the cold and rainy weather we are having in Cape Town, it is nice to dream of a warm and sunny Africa! This is a house in Hillside Road, Fish Hoek.

On top of the world

A young hiker hoists the broken trig beacon on top of Brakkloofrant overlooking Fish Hoek. This is a really nice trail that takes you on an hour or so walk from the east to the west of Fish Hoek across the ridge of the Fish Hoek mountain, with fabulous views over Fish Hoek and Simon's Town.

Yellow tide-foam

Icy cold winds and a frothy Fish Hoek this morning.

Pretty in pink

Seen on the beach at Fish Hoek yesterday morning: a little hermit crab in a plough snail shell. It looks like it could be a Pink Hermit (Paguristes gamianus) and I will post it on the wonderful iSpot website and see if one of the experts agrees. It has been quite stormy here so maybe it got washed off the rocky shores that it prefers as it is not usually seen on the beach.

My bibile for sea creatures is George Branch et al, Two Oceans: A guide to the marine life of southern Africa, published by David Philip, Cape Town in 1994.

The Cape winter

Early morning walk along Fish Hoek in a gentle Cape Town winter drizzle.

According to Wikipedia, Cape Town enjoys an ocean Mediterranean climate (Koppen Csa), with mild, moderately wet winters and dry, warm summers. Winter, which lasts from the beginning of June to the end of August, may see large cold fronts entering for limited periods from the Atlantic Ocean with significant precipitation and strong north-westerly winds. Winter months in the city average a maximum of 18.0 °C (64 °F)and minimum of 8.5 °C (47 °F). Total annual rainfall in the city averages 515 millimetres (20.3 in). Summer, which lasts from early December to March, is warm and dry with an average maximum of 26.0 °C (79 °F) and minimum of 16.0 °C (61 °F). The region can get uncomfortably hot when the Berg Wind, meaning "mountain wind", blows from the Karoo interior for a couple of weeks in February or early March. Late spring and early summer may sometimes feature a strong wind from the south-east, known locally as the Cape Doctor, so called because it blows air pollution away. This wind is caused by a high-pressure system which sits in the South Atlantic to the west of Cape Town, known as the South-Atlantic High. Cape Town's average amount of sunshine per year (3,100 hours) compares favourably with that of Los Angeles (3,300 hours)and Tel Aviv (3,300 hours), and exceeds that of Athens and Madrid (2,900 hours).

Seascape

An early morning walk on Fish Hoek beach with a submarine, a grey battleship and a stricken Chilean cargo ship out on the stormy water. There were also lots of dolphins moving along the coast - you can just see some white specks beyond the breakers. I didn't get to see what type but the fact that they were leaping right out of the water and twisting and turning in the air makes me think they may have been Dusky Dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obscurus). But they could also have been Common Dolphins (Delphinus delphis) or Bottlenosed Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus).

Clamming up

This large clam is the Smooth Trough Shell (Mactra glabrata) that often washes up on Fish Hoek Beach. While alive, the clam burrows just below the surface of the waves in fine sand and like most bivalves, it is a filter feeder - sucking water through an inhalant siphon, sieving it through sheet-like gills, and then expelling the waste water through an exhalant siphon. Much of the body consists of gonad and enormous amounts of egg and sperm are shed into the water where they develop into planktonic larvae.
One seldom sees them alive, but apparently they are good to eat.

Info from Branch, G.M., Griffiths, C.L., Branch, M.L. and Beckley, L.E. 1994. Two oceans. A guide to the marine life of southern Africa. David Philip, Cape Town.

Shadow boxing

After all the rain yesterday, the Silvermine River was coming down in full spate, and it seemed like these little crabs had been washed down the river out to sea, then back onto the sandy beach. I think it must be the Sandflat Crab (Cleistostoma edwardsii). It's carapace is less than 1 cm wide, but with that huge shadow, it looks quite ferocious!

Little boy's games?

These little soldiers adorn the side gates to the little park known as The Garden of Remembrance on Kommetjie Road in Fish Hoek which also houses a Roll of Rembrance and a burning light, presumably to remeber a few of the young men from Fish Hoek who lost their lives in World War Two. The park is rather neglected but has great olde-world charm, tinged with sadness at the unnecessary loss of young lives in war.

Freedom Day in the most beautiful country in the world

Freedom Day today - a public holiday to remember the miracle of our first free democratic election in 1994. Today on Fish Hoek beach there were some members of one of the African Independent Churches who are also known as African Zionists, nothing to do with the Zion movement of Israel but because they are descendants of the congregation of a group of pentecostal missionaries from Zion in Illinois, USA who came out in the late 1800s and early 1900s to South Africa. They have beautiful flowing, almost Ethiopian looking robes and transformed the scene into something wonderfully exotic. Who could not love this country?

Gazing suspiciously out to sea are several Kelp Gulls. Maybe they are concerned about all the sharks at Fish Hoek.

Reflections

Train reflections on Fish Hoek Beach.

Messing about in boats

Anyone for sea-kayaking? A perfect Fish Hoek morning.

Head over heels

This morning's walk on Fish Hoek beach revealed lots of kelp washed up after last night's storm. Many of the kelp stipes were encrusted with barnacles which are the most fascinating creatures. They are highly modified crustaceans and this is their adult phase. After swimming around the ocean as planktonic larvae, the adults settle down, head first, and cement themselves to a substrate, secreting a shell and extending their legs (or cirri) through a hole at the top to filter out food particles. I think this one might be the White Dwarf Barnacle (Notomegabalanus algicola).
These were the creatures that so fascinated Charles Darwin too.

Bleached and beached

Chalky cuttlebones are a familiar sight on beach high tide lines in South Africa. As a kid I remember collecting them for my budgies. They are the internal skeletons of cuttlefish, members of the Cephalopodia (a Greek word meaning "head feet") class of mollusc that include squid, octopuses and cuttlefish -certainly the most sophisticated invertebrates around today. Their ancestors used to dominate the waters of the prehistoric ocean - everyone has heard of ammonites and belemnites; and there is even a legendary kraken.
My find this morning on Fish Hoek beach is probably the cuttlebone of Sepia papillata - a large cuttlefish (15 cm long) that occurs in the open ocean off southern Africa. The cuttlebone is used to regulate the buoyancy of the cuttlefish by modifying its gas and liquid content.
Cuttlefish are also famous for producing the familiar sepia pigment used in ink.

Information from Two Oceans: A guide to the marine life of southern Africa by George Branch et al.

Spotted

This week's Fish Hoek walk revealed a few Three-Spot Swimming Crabs (Ovalipes trimaculatus) washed up on the high tide mark. These crabs live in the turbulent surf zone on sandy beaches and eat bivalves and gastropods, particularly Plough Snails (Bullia). They can swim, as their hind limbs which have "paddles" on them indicate, but they also scuttle across the sand, and bury themselves in the sand - backwards first - when threatened.

Imagining the past

As you leave Fish Hoek Beach you cross the railway line, and on your left is the South African Navy's "WO's, CPO's and PO's Mess". This is the site of Fish Hoek's original farm homestead that was built, it is thought, in the nineteenth century by one of the owners of the "Vischhoek loan place"or farm, a Thomas Palmer, who bought it in 1822 and then went insolvent, after which the farm was subdivided into three. Several subdivisions later it was bought by the formidable Hester de Villiers, who was the owner when this photo was taken in the early twentieth century. The scar made by the stone quarry (opened in 1896) in the hill above can be seen even to this day. Today, a hundred years later. The blue arrow marks the spot of the naval mess, hidden behind the ugly beach buildings.

Puffed up

Washed up on Fish Hoek Beach this morning: a small, round, puffed up little fish called a 'blaasop', which is Afrikaans for "puffed up". It is a Birdbeak Burrfish (Cyclichthys orbiculatis) that normally lives in the open ocean (Indian and Pacific). Juveniles are often washed up on Cape beaches. Its spines are modified scales.

Downtown

Main Road, Fish Hoek. Not the most beautiful of Cape Town's suburbs, but it is vibrant, safe and real people live and work there. And the beach and surrounding mountains are pretty spectacular.

Trek fishing

What better way to start the day than an early morning walk on Fish Hoek beach watching the traditional trek fishermen launching their boat?
And talking of boats, the Queen Mary arrived in Cape Town this morning. Hope to get to see her before she leaves.