Colourful Soft Corals
In the 1970s the Navy scuttled two old frigates, a diamond dredger and two fishing trawlers in the sea off Smitswinkel Bay to create an artificial reef.
The vessels now lie close together at about 30-40 m down. Being deep, often with limited visibility, any dive here requires careful planning (or go with a local dive operator).
Three of the ships lie upright on the sandy bottom, the other two on their sides. The plates are covered with colourful soft corals, sea fans, sea sponges and anemones. Nudibranches and sea stars are also prolific, but take a strong torch to see them at their best. For advanced divers various penetration dives are possible.
Cathedral Rock
This one's unusual in that it's a shore-entry dive, where you slide between large granite boulders that are densely packed with soft corals and attendant sea life. With a maximum of just 15 m, it is suitable for entry-level divers and also good for night diving. The fish here - mainly red roman, stumpnose and hottentot - are so friendly they often follow the divers around.
While False Bay is still a temperate marine habitat (a thick wetsuit is required), the increasing influence of the warm Agulhas current has brought many organisms from warmer climes: kingfish, barracuda and Indo-Pacific reef species. Given time, False Bay could well become a subtropical underwater paradise.
By David Bristow
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