Sardine Run 2011

Each year during May through July, a cold northerly current causes millions of sardines to gather in shoals and move north. Visible by satellite, the shoals measuring more than seven kilometres long, 1.5 kilometres wide and 30 meters deep, run up the East coast of South Africa. While doing so, the silvery, swirling swarm becomes fodder for those higher up the food chain. Pursued relentlessly by thousands upon thousands of dolphins, sharks, seals, penguins, whales and gannets, these creatures' feeding frenzy spawns the greatest faunal event on earth. As many as 23000 bottlenose and common dolphins expertly herd the sardines towards shallow waters where the little fish from massive bait balls measuring up to 20 meters in diameter. Super-pods of dolphins, whales and sharks sweep through these balls, gorging on mouthfuls of fish, while voracious seabirds plummet from the skies above like fighter planes, scooping out their victims with ease. As if that wasn't enough, this years sardines had an additional enemy to deal with: A little boat named The Pearl, with three pirates (the crew of Tailor Made Safaris) with three fishing rods...

Okay, as you can see, the annual sardine run is quite a spectacle, and we were dead keen to go and experience it. However, driving to the sardine run Mecca, Port St. Johns, some 660 km South of St. Lucia is do-able, but paying 30.000 rand each for a week long diving charter isn't... Our good friend Charl came up with a master plan: We would drive down, towing his boat, and go out at sea ourselves! In the meantime we would fish like hell, and the caught fish would be used as bait for Charl's charters for the rest of the year. This way we could make some money to cover a part of the cost of going down to Port St. Johns for a week. Excellent, so here we went (click on the photos for an enlargement):

Got our fishing permits, and off we go!

Port St. Johns lies on the beautiful Wild Coast

The local Xhosa people are cute

and hard working

Every morning we would get up before sunrise, to check the conditions of the sea.

Then we would drive down the river towards the sea.

Launching here is dancing with death, but certainly do-able, according to our experienced skipper Charl

Once out at sea, we got to see humpback whales

and southern right whales

and thousands of gannets plummeting out of the air

and hundreds of dolphins, everywhere you would look!

Freya got to snorkel with them

and took some lovely underwater shots

We found a loggerhead turtle as well

so Freya snorkelled with him too.

I was busy taking photos

of flying gannets

and floating gannets

and floating white-chinned petrels

Then it was time for some action shots: Fighter Plane incoming!

Fighter Jet 3 is late...

And Charl? He was fishing...

In the afternoon we would bask in the sun, eating noodle soup and drinking hot chocolate with Amarula.

At the end of the week we travelled North, to Scottsburgh where the people were netting the sardines from the beach: One big catching frenzy, and people stealing each others fish.

People even casting their net into the bigger net of other people.

And then running for your life with your stolen fish in a plastic bag

The commercial operators were unfazed though, they diligently filled their crates while others stole fish through their nets.

And since our fishing didn't quite deliver a years supply of bait for Charl's fishing charters, we bought 4 crates of sardines right from the beach. Happy days!