Aliwal Shoal Reef Cleanup
Dive Blog #1
Date: 07 June 2025 | Dive Site: Aliwal Shoal | Dive Charter: ScubaXcursion
Max Depth: 25.2m | Bottom Time: 61 Minutes | Gas: Nitrox (32%)
Temperature: 22°C | Visibility: 15-20m
Camera: Canon G16 | Lens: Dyron Super Wide Angle Lens
Strobes: Sea & Sea YS-01 and YS-03
World Oceans Day was to be celebrated on June 8, 2025. In anticipation, dives were arranged to conduct reef clean-ups on Aliwal Shoal. I joined the early morning dive, launching at 08:00. It was a smooth and easy launch, with no trouble getting out and almost no wind on the water.
After the short boat ride, it was time to kit up and dive in. As I was putting my first fin on, of course, my bungee heel strap decided to break. Fortunately for me, ScubaX is prepared for such calamities, and a spare set of neon yellow fins was available for me to use.
The goal of course for this dive was to collect any litter or fishing line spotted on the reef. Myself and many others, however, failed to find any, which was unsurprising. The crown region of the reef that we were diving on is about 5km from the shore, and is a no-take zone for fishing. On the more southern reefs and sites such as Landers, I have seen fishing line, but not so much on the crown region, unless there has been some heavy rainfall beforehand, washing trash into the rivers and out to sea.
On this dive, I decided to give my new wide-angle setup a proper test in the ocean. This was the first time in the ocean that I got to try out the Dyron Super Wide Angle Lens in combination with a pair of strobes, one of which was full manual, and the other full TTL.
It was quite a learning experience from doing macro. The image above of the tassled scorpion fish was my best. Some others came out well, whilst others, not so much. I completely forgot that when shooting up, I should close down my aperture and raise my shutter speed to get sunrays; I was only remembering that I need to lower the shutter speed for bluer backgrounds.
We came across a spotted snake eel (Myrichthys tigrinus) on the dive, an animal I had never seen before! I was very excited to photograph it. By the time it was my turn to get some images of it, the group was mostly gone, so I only had a quick chance to snap some pictures. Unfortunately, my settings were very wrong from my attempts at shooting towards the sun. I got some snapshots, but no wonderful pictures. The snake eel was very cute and curious, and came to inspect my camera before I drifted away.
Of course, with my fin strap breaking before the dive even started, something else had to go wrong. My primary strobe (YS-01, full manual, and is the master to the slave YS-03) stopped recharging/firing. So in my head, I’m wondering why; is the battery dead? Is it flooded? If it’s flooded, did it leak into the rest of the strobe? What if I can’t fix it? So I decided to tell myself the battery was just dead, move the fibre optic connecting the two strobes from the YS-01 to the camera, and continue shooting with one strobe. A decision I am glad I made, as there was still plenty to see on the dive, including some cool coral formations.
During the start of the dive, somebody said that it was their goal to finally see an octopus on the reef. We hadn’t seen any. Until right before we began to make our ascent, one was spotted, with its tentacle wrapped around itself, sticking out of a hole
So we ascended, and the boat ride back began, concluding the dive. The reef cleanup was a failure (in a good way). So, onto the matter of the non-working strobe. It was just dead batteries. Maybe the charger was faulty, but I will investigate that and see what happens. No flooded strobe, which is the most important thing, and it works with the other batteries.