There is an old spearfishing saying, “No sharks, no fish”
Spearfishing on the east coast of South Africa in summer can be a wild affair. The moment the pelagic fish arrive they seem to bring with them hoards of sharks. Or is it the other way around?
This past year the diving was short lived with two cyclones wrecking the conditions for most of the summer. Followed up by massive flooding in April which then canceled any hope of diving through winter. And it seems like we are still wallowing in the murk 8 months later.
The diving we did however get in the summer was action packed and the fish really seemed to be here enforce. And those who found the odd clean gap between the cyclone swells got real lucky.
I managed to get one good day out off our home grounds at the beginning of April, just before the floods hit. The sharks were wild, and in some places seemed to be shoaling. Ryan and I got a bunch of really good fish, and we somehow didn't lose any fish to sharks. We had a bunch of fairly close encounters that got the heart pumping, making for some entertaining videos.
The vis however was really marginal, and the weather was overcast and gloomy. So I only filmed a bunch of my dives with the a gopro 7. I never had any intention of using any of the footage. As the gloomy green water did not make for great 'eye candy'.
A few months later going through the footage and realising that the footage was really action packed I decided to put an edit together. I had not filmed any B roll footage to add to the edit. So I decided to try something a little different and do a 'blow by blow' run down of each dive filmed and try add in as much value as possible, commenting on techniques and situations as they happened.
I hope you enjoy this video and running commentary of each dive as it happened. Who knows maybe this will be the start of a series of videos diving with Ryan on the Taxman.
Cheers
Chris