Saturday 26th April was a beautiful sunny day with lots of BBC activity:
- Firstly, the collaborative event, between the Betty’s Bay Conservancy, Matie’s Underwater Club (MUC) and CapeNature, took place at Stony Point.
- Secondly, residents were invited to help clean Stony Point and the beach areas nearby.
- Thirdly, clean-ups happened at other beaches and rocky shore areas in Betty’s Bay such as Sunny Seas, Doringbaai, Silversand, Draadbaai, and near Dawidskraal
- Fourthly, it was the City Nature Challenge, so participants were encouraged to download the iNaturalist App and to take photos of the flora and fauna during the clean-up or anytime from the 25 – 28 April.
The idea for an underwater clean-up was initiated by Zeané from Maties Underwater Club (MUC). She contacted the BBC and it developed into a collaborative event between MUC and the BBC in the form of an underwater clean-up dive together with a beach/rocky shore clean-up. Along the logistics journey for the dive event, sorting permits and for emergency back up, we linked in BlackSheep Diving and CapeNature.
The dive and clean-up were scheduled as the April BBC4thSAturday event.
Nine divers from MUC, two BBC divers and a SANCCOB free diver, dived under the leadership of Lenize from BlackSheep Diving.
After a preparation time to check equipment, time to gear up and a safety talk, the divers headed off for their clean-up dive. Although the visibility underwater was unfortunately poor, the divers did manage to pick up old sinkers and some other trash. These were weighed and analyzed afterwards and the data was recorded for a Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI) “Dive Against Debris” (DAD).
Zeané and her mom, Rina, did an amazing task of providing warm drinks and delicious eats for the divers to enjoy after the dive. The BBC also provided refreshments.
Thanks to Galia and Barbara of the BBC Committee for hosting the nine MUC divers on Friday evening.
Well done to the MUC divers: Zeané, Lee, Liya, Jenna and Jenna, Alexander, Klara, Rebekah, Bianca and Rozanne to Tim and Herman of BBC, Gavin of SANCCOB and Lenize of BlackSheep Diving.
MUC were an enthusiastic bunch of divers, with a passion to conserve the environment, and we look forward to collaborating with them on further events – hopefully with better visibility! We are looking ahead to Marine Protected Area (MPA) Day on the 1 August for another possible event.
The BBC thanks everyone who helped to make this April BBC4th Saturday event possible.
STONY POINT and DRAADBAAI
During the morning, some residents came to BBC table at Stony Point and collected bags to help with a clean-up of the area: Jenni and Hannah, Julia, Claire and her friend and the two guys whose names unfortunately we didn’t write down – sorry!
Ruargh and Phillip cleaned two bags of trash from the Draadbaai area and Marlize and her family took bags with them to clean their area later.
Some of the BBC Penguin-Pals volunteers also helped clean up at Stony Point and supported the dive event.
Thanks to all of you for doing your “Every day do one small act for biodiversity”
The carpark and paths around the Stony Point, and Draadbaai are now much cleaner! One of the overseas tourists even commented to us how clean the colony area looked.
SUNNY SEAS
Thanks to those Sunny Seas residents who grabbed a bag and went out in groups or ”solo” to clean-up over the weekend. They helped to clean various sections and streets of Sunny Seas including Abelone, Dolphin Drive, Clarence Drive, Luckhoff, Seaview and Albertyn roads
They left Sunny Seas cleaner by bagging about 20 bags of trash that included items such as glass bottles, large plastic bottles, lots of plastic items, cigarette packets, bits of cardboard, polystyrene containers, fish line, takkies, flipflops, rope, cans, builder’s plastic, paper and thin wire.
Photos: supplied by Sunny Seas residents
The plastic items were separated from the rest of the trash in the bags that were collected at Sunny Seas, Stony Point and Draadbaai. Barbara delivered these six bags of mixed plastic to the Centre for Regenerative Design and Collaboration (CRDC) who grind this up and a percentage of it is put into concrete bricks.
Photo: Barbara Jenman. Have a look at what CDRC does at https://www.crdc-sa.com/
A PENGUIN RESCUE AS WELL!
The BBC PENGUIN-PALS drivers completed their 65th “precious cargo” drive on Saturday
While the divers were preparing for the underwater clean-up and the BBC for beach/rocky shore clean-up, an injured penguin was seen nearby by Gavin, the SANCCOB Seabird Ranger. He caught the penguin and then notified SANCCOB so that they could arrange a driver from the Centre.
Wessel, a BBC Penguin-pals driver, was already onsite for the BBC event, and volunteered to drive the injured bird to the halfway meeting place in Somerset West. Thanks Wessel!
This rapid response time ensured the penguin arrived at SANCCOB quickly. We hope its injury is successfully treated by Dr Roberts and the Team so that it might be released back to the ocean again.
Photo: Carol Clark
STONY POINT PENGUIN RELEASE
On an extremely cold and windy Thursday morning, Harriet and I bundled our grandchildren up to see some penguins being released in a joint effort between SANCCOB, Cape Nature and various volunteers including ‘BBC Penguin -Pals”.
We arrived just in time to see the specially designed cartons with the precious cargo being passed down a human chain from the car park to the little beach next to the reserve entrance. It was icy as the wind was blowing directly off the sea. Bad enough for us just watching but really “big ups” to the folk getting their hands dirty!
It did not take long before the cartons were lined up on the beach, and then all of them were opened on cue. Not quite a formula one start, but after a few seconds of milling around, a few of the adults (penguins that is) clearly recognised the ocean for what it was and waddled into the water before streaking around back in their natural habitat. Others followed, and soon most of the penguins were where they are meant to be. It was very uplifting to watch and big thanks to all involved in the rescue, care and release of these magnificent birds.
PS: Hopefully, the six or so juvenile penguins who remained huddled on the beach soon discovered the beauty of the ocean!
Brian McMillian: photos are screengrabs from his video
BBC Penguin-Pals Volunteer, Pringle Bay