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Diving With Sharks!

Diving With Sharks!

Diving With Sharks! Debbie Smith aka The Shark Lady, has recently launched her brand new website and online campaign at http://divingwithsharks.co.za.

Incredible imagery leads to Debbie’s underwater options – the current favourite being The Sardine Run as we move into the sardine migration season – when they swim up the East Coast of Africa.

Millions of sardines head north on a kamikaze mission as they are hammered to pieces by all kinds of underwater predators. Dolphins. Seals. Gannets. Whales. And sharks. Plenty!

The Sardine Run trips by Diving With Sharks, in association with Offshore Africa Port St. Johns, are run from out of the Uzmzimvubu River on the Transkei Wild Coast. Rob Nettleton and Debbie Smith have been operating in this area – the best place to get to the sardine shoals and baitballs, as they come up from the southern ocean, for a decade now.

Diving With Sharks also operate up north in KZN waters – Aliwal Shoal and Protea Reef being hot spots, and where Debbie learned her skills as shark tamer. That’s her in the picture below! Note how Debbie holds her hands and arms close to her body – less to bite onto for the odd curious shark, that come in so close.

Click on over to Diving With  Sharks for more info or to book a Sardine Run experience – accommodation and all, with Debbie and Rob.

A taste of what can be found on http://divingwithsharks.co.za

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Shipspotting with AIS

Shipspotting with AIS

If you are smart enough to run a smart phone, then you just can’t be dumb enough to get bored…ever again.

Take this ship for example…

Just buzz on over to marinetraffic.com, zone in on your carpark, and see the names and even missions, of all those hunks of metal cruising the horizons. Even yachts!

You may get bored after a while and have to switch on over to some other entertainment stream, but you will definitely find your self loading up all this cool ship data again and again – especially in that carpark with an afternoon onshore and a quart in your hand.

Even some some ski-boats are equipped with AIS transponders, but for the most part, its mainly large vessels travelling trade routes that use the system to obviously avoid collisions. There is the pirate drawback, but you can turn the transponder off of you like, but for the most part it AIS has become a valuable all-round source of cool data.

Wikipedia is gonna be much better at explaining it than me, this morning…

“The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is an automatic tracking system used on ships and by vessel traffic services (VTS) for identifying and locating vessels by electronically exchanging data with other nearby ships…”

Check out the full story right here…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Identification_System

Marine Traffic (http://marinetraffic.com) even have a really cool App that you can get for free from the Play Store or equivalent, on your phone. Or just access through a browser – any browser will do!


 

Big news today is the launch of Offshore Africa Port St. Johns’ Web 3.0 website. Rob Nettleton and co’s IN YOUR FACE photography will get you checking that your wetsuit is hanging nicely, and ready for next year.

Click on over to http://offshoreafricaportstjohns.com and look around, like and share…

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Why you should know about the Shark Angels

Why you should know about the Shark Angels

We are really leaving the future of our species, and that of all species on this planet, to the tiniest minority. Volunteers.

Yes, we do have governmental institutions in place, but no, they are not doing their work. Instead, they facilitate the continued destruction of our natural resources. In every country on the planet.

It’s all very simple actually. The current governmental system, is what’s to blame. It allows for the manipulation of laws and measures. And in some cases, total ignorance of them. Money buys the whiskey, and money can bend the rules.

And the scientists allow it to happen. It is what they are paid to do. Validate bullshit and develop new ways to extort the planet and it’s oceans. Paid for by the governments and corporations. Never trust a scientist (Ok ok, there are some good ones out there).

It’s the volunteer groups. They are the people interested and concerned enough, with the environment, to do something. Greenpeace, Sea-Shepherd…the list, fortunately, is extensive.

Introducing the Shark Angels . An international team of volunteers committed to saving sharks, around the world. Including, and especially, here in South Africa. Where our sharks swim under severe threat, of being strangled and drowned, in the gill nets, of the Kwazulu Natal Sharks Board (KZNSB).

The KZNSB have been cruelly drowning sharks in their nets for decades. At the cost of hundreds of millions of Rands. This year alone, expenditure will reach a hundred million Rand or more. Paid by us. The government takes our money and uses it to kill our sharks. The very sharks that tourists spend their cash to come and see. And even swim with.

Check out the following link to get to know the Shark Angels better.

http://sharkangels.org/media/press

 

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Ouisurf.tv in Mozambique

Ouisurf.tv in Mozambique

http://ouisurf.tv/chapitre/mozambique/

Aside from being filled with knockout  imagery and content, the web presentation of what Ouisurf.tv did whilst they were here with us, is over the top with slickness and awe inspiring execution.

This is most likely the way the internet will progress, it’s all moving away from tiny text based web sites of html days – now it’s the availability of bandwidth that is providing the net with the kick it needed to start with presentations like these chaps have done. Click the link above for the real deal, and then the gallery attached, a behind the scenes moment, in..ummm Pomene (sorry Dom).

Then some links to some more of the chapters…

https://www.facebook.com/OuiSurf/videos/vb.218859584121/10153170902969122/?type=2&theater

http://ouisurf.tv/preface/?vimeoid=112138393

 

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Tides4Fishing.com

http://www.tides4fishing.com/af/south-africa/durban

Follow the link above to a fantastic compilation of tidal data, presented for fishing! The link above takes you to the Durban data set, but you can check it out for all over the world!

Says tonight is on!

There are also 3D renderings of the earth and it’s status regards sunrise and sunset. Really cool…click below…

http://www.tides4fishing.com/3D-simulation/3

 

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