State of the KZN Ocean Address: How quick will it recover?

Durban Sunrise in April with Cold Front Clouds Looming as the Ocean Recovers

State of the KZN Ocean Address: How quick will it recover?

State of the KZN Ocean Address: How quick will it recover? The KZN South Coast ocean is known to recover extraordinarily fast, specially in wintertime. This is because the Agulhas Current picks up steam to like 6 knots out deep. And this current is what drags away the brown water with it as it brushes up against the coastline.

You could do some maths. The current does not power like that in shallow however. And sometimes a counter current can form up along the inside, but this occurs later during the year, normally. Or we would have another early sardine run. Let’s say it gets up to about 3 knots along the backline, if we are lucky. That is 5 kmh. Which means that theoretically, all the water along the entire coast is replaced every 48 hours.

Durban is tricky since it has a weird section of continental shelf to deal with. That extends right out to sea and causes the infamous Natal Pulse in the Agulhas Current that causes the upwelling and the counter current all the way down in Agulhas, just for the sardines to use to get up here on their annual vacation.

This layout of the land means that our clean water won’t really come from the Durban beach front, but will come in along the continental shelf with the current hitting the coastline at about Amanzimtoti.

Optimistically, you could have clean water down south here by the weekend. BUT. There is still runoff making its own merry way down to the KZN ocean via the many open rivers. That are each pouring more and more brown into the current. The rains did not stick around for too long, though, so this runoff is already easing in the Umzimkulu here. Maybe the other rivers will also slow right down and let the Agulhas do its job and clean us up again!

Couple early reports in so far…

Ian at Umtentweni

Over to Allan, hot on Ian’s heels with reporting this morning…

Allan at The Block

And Kevin in Qora rounds off the conditions…

Kevin in Qora

South Swells by Kevin in the Transkei at Qora Mouth #ocean #conditions #sardines #humpback #whales I wouldn’t say it’s big but it’s definitely generating uh some south swell wrapping in off the point probably two to three metre big and nothing huge probably dissipate pretty fast because I’m looking out deep on the horizon and it’s not big bumps out there so this is just like a generated by the local storm that’s just come through now but it’s a good sign it’s a good sign that the south swells are starting to run the offshore winds are probably more important because that tells me that we’ve moved into the winter cycle which is every morning is offshore winds a land breeze that kind of dissipates by about 9:00 and then your prevailing wind for the day kind of changes and picks up so it’s all good yeah all good sards should get up and start moving one of these days still looking for my humpback whales I need to start seeing those humps moving through that’s kind of when the sards come behind them and it’s quite interesting because those humpback whales come from you know the the south pole from the Antarctic they obviously start their migration a little bit earlier than the sards and so they those humpbacks also move right over the Agulhas Bank they came from a lot further south but they also move over the Agulhas Bank which is where our sods come from so I’m also wondering and it’s interesting uh to watch the data to see how much the humpback whale migration coincides with getting the sardines moving off of the Agulhas bank maybe those two are also synchronized so anyway it’s a it’s a thought that I have and I’m watching it just to see if how that kind of correlates with the Sardine run but anyway Ja ja all good bud all good sards are probably gonna be moving sometime in May I’m gonna say by mid to late May we should be getting our first pilot shoals coming through here cool bud cheers By Kevin in Qora