Our story about an incredible encounter with a dolphin on a regular Monday shore dive
After a few discussion on Facebook and via texts whether or not to dive this afternoon (as Damian had only just returned from his trip to South Africa and was still very jet lagged), we decided to go for a quick one and after a quick discussion we decided to go for a shore dive close to home on the Hallett Cove Reef!
Because the reef is quite close to shore you would expect this to be a popular shore dive, but from the car park to the waterline it’s a bit of a walk (about 300 metres), so a lot of divers can’t be bothered to dive this site, which is a shame as there is plenty to see on the reef and it’s an easy cruisy dive.
So we decided to do it and met in the car park, where we exchanged some stories from the last two weeks, kitted up and jumped in our drysuits! Turned out that it was still quite warm and walking 300 metres in 25+ degrees heat in a drysuit makes you feel like a turkey in an oven!! Luckily 300 metres isn’t thaaat far though, so before we knew it we were in the water making our way to the reef! Once you’re in the water it’s only about a 100 metre swim out to the reef, so we were on the reef in a few fin strokes!
The reef is quite nice with some interesting life on it! Within the first 10 minutes we had seen quite a lot of fish, both big and small and then got surprised by seeing something you don’t see every day in SA: a snake eel! Denise and I had seen quite a few when we were living in the Caribbean, so we’re very used to seeing them and as soon as I saw the snake eels head I knew this was an eel and not an actual sea snake, so there wasn’t anything to worry about. The snake eel was digging for prey and came out of a hole with a tasty snack in its mouth and it seemed quite content with its catch!
We went to the outside of the reef and followed the reef north for just over 30 minutes before turning around. Up until that point it had been a very standard dive with some cool things to look at, such as the snake eel, a cowfish and a walking seastar, but then we looked in the distance and saw this massive shape moving around just ahead of us. Not knowing what it was, I kept the GoPro ready and made sure that whatever it was, I would catch it on camera! About three seconds later the dark shape moved in and it turned out to be this super curious dolphin!! I signalled to Damian to come in straight away and before we knew it we were having this beautiful, playful dolphin swimming around us and checking us out!
After it came in for a first look it made a quick spin around us and then went up for air and went out of sight! We couldn’t believe or luck and just kept looking around us, hoping that it would come it! It seemed like minutes, but it were probably just a few seconds and right at the moment that we decided to continue the dive, the dolphin came back in and kept looking at us with this surprised look in its eyes. It kept spinning around us and going up for air a few times, before it headed out into the blue to disappear out of sight. We waited for a few minutes with the hope it would return but it had seen enough of these two strange bubble blowing creatures for today!
You often hear that it’s a lot more fun diving with sea lions than it is to dive with dolphins, as dolphins are usually quite scared or get bored a lot easier than sea lions. We have to say that we’re both big fans of diving with sea lions as they are sooo much fun, but this encounter with this very playful dolphin was simply stunning and is one of our most special diving moments so far!
We almost spend 70 minutes underwater, with the absolute highlight being the dolphin encounter of course, but we were also very surprised by the snake eel! We had an easy beach entry, the water temperature was about 17 degrees and there was a slight current running.
