24 February 2021
19
www.thevillagenews.co.za
Discovering a hidden kingdom By Jax Bath
H
the kelp. The combination of colours is astounding, with urchins, anemones and sponges adding purple, red and blue hues to the rocky walls that run through this area, creating large drop-offs and shallow outcrops. It’s impossible not to feel like an intrepid explorer as you make your way through the crevices on one breath, trying to take in as many of the sights as you can before bursting back up through the canopy.
eading into a kelp forest is like sneaking into a Narnia, exploring a forgotten land or discovering an entirely new kingdom. Every excursion into the forest yields something new and exciting, and the more time you spend in a forest, the more you begin to see.
I spotted the octopus before the shark, and the kIipvis before the octopus. In the incredible book ‘Sea Change’, Craig Foster talks about the relationship between klipvis and octopus. The fish will hang out around their eight-legged fried in the hopes that their friends might flush out some prey that they might catch and quickly devour. In the case of this story, however, neither the fish nor the cephalopod were top dog, with a sly shy shark lying in wait under a thick clump of seaweed. The octopus would make a small yet satisfying meal for the predator. The klipvis, a snack.
Kelp forests line the rocky areas along our coastline and form a canopy under which life thrives. Like all forests, you can visit these oceanic havens a million times and each time, it appears a little different. The time of day, the tide, the visibility and the water temperature greatly impact what one might find and see, and this week’s ocean story is a mixture of my last few visits to the kelp forests of De Kelders.
The kelp canopy holds life too. As you make your way deeper and deeper into the forest, you’ll find yourself clambering through the kelp. Cryptic klipvis make their homes between the fronds but are quickly flushed out as you approach. As you travel through kelp clearings, you meet silverfish trying to make their way towards the beach. You’ll find periwinkles scaling the stipe of the kelp and sometimes, when you put your hand on a frond, you might feel something slightly silkier instead. On my last dive here, I touched a Giant clingfish by mistake, who was luckily quick to forgive and stuck around so that I could snap a photo or two before leaving it to disguise itself once again on the kelp. The entry to this forest is over pebbles into a clearing where silver schooling fish will enjoy their time in waters slightly less frigid than what they’re used to. It’s a lovely introduction to the snorkel spot, clear with a sandy bottom, and if you had to stare from the cliffs above, you would sometimes see the light reflect off the scales of the fish as they turn and twist their bodies. Although you’ve not technically entered the forest yet, you will begin to find some of its inhabitants in this section. Klipvis are usually aplenty and I’ve spotted an octopus or two here too over the past few months. Surf shrimp sometimes hang out in this section too, but the weirdest, most wonderful creature I’ve sighted here so far was a luminous sea slug. As I was about to end a snorkel a couple of weeks back, a bright orange gumdrop-looking creature appeared. A lemon pleurobranch side-gilled sea slug had found itself a little too far from home and was moving at a snail’s, or perhaps rather a slug’s, pace back to deeper waters.
On my next snorkel, I found the visibility clear and the surge gone, so I also moved into deeper parts of the forest to see what it might hold. With such incredible conditions, it was like rediscovering the cove for the very first time. The sea fans seemed more vibrant, the soft corals a few gorgeous shades of pink. These creatures find their homes in the crevices beneath
In another section of the forest, seaweeds are a little more prolific. They’re also important, providing the perfect place for mermaids to attach their purses safely to the surrounding algae, which will then house these precious parcels until one day, a tiny shark will emerge. The mermaids are in fact shy sharks, which are ferocious predators in the forest but not so easily sighted by snorkelers, due to their incredible ability to blend and sneak their way in and out of the rocky overhangs. For months I have happened upon this spot but only recently have I actually come across one of these mysterious cartilaginous creatures in the near vicinity.
The cephalopod, proving to be the more intelligent of the two, must have sensed that something was not quite right and snuck away beneath a rock somewhere before the shy shark could turn the corner. The klipvis took no time to mourn the absence of its friend and turned around to carry on with its day. As it turned, it came face to face with the shy shark and then proceeded to show off just how fast these charismatic and generally confident creatures can make themselves disappear. The shark didn’t seem too disappointed and lay in the area for a few minutes more before finding its own hiding spot. As cute as the shark was, I must admit that I was rooting more for the fish and its friend, so I’m glad they both made it out unscathed.
The past few snorkels have proved both diverse and filled with drama, which is exactly what any nature lover wants when they set foot, or fin, into any wilderness. Here’s hoping that this coming week will present another opportunity to peer into life below the canopy.
