BSc (Hons) Marine Biology and Coastal Ecology at the University of Plymouth - South Africa field course.

What I would give to be back in South Africa with my MBCE group. Fabulous video edited by one of my coursemates from Plymouth (and look at the last still, there's me on the left... okay, I do look like a bit of a loner but we were running away from the sea!)

African penguins (Spheniscus demersus) at Boulders Beach, Simon's town, South Africa

This was another fantastic day trip that we did in our week 'holiday' before the field course, we went to see the penguins. A colony of African penguins, also known as Jackass penguins (Spheniscus demersus) settled at Boulders Beach in 1982 and is a popular tourist attraction. Luckily (I say it in a very loose way) it was bucketing it down with rain when we went... I've never been so wet in my life! I didn't even think about it, so here we were walking from the Simon's Town train station to Boulders Beach, in the rain, with our waterproof jackets on, completely forgetting that jeans have to be the absolute worst thing you can wear in these conditions. My blue jeans looked black by the end of it, when we came home we were shivering and I ended up breaking my phone (due to the rain). 

Anyway...

We got on a bus to get to Cape Town train station, it was actually very scary since the bus didn't want to stop for us and so we had to jump on whilst it was still moving, only to sit there being stared at for the whole 20-30 minutes. It was very cheap though so we couldn't complain. Upon arrival at the train station we bought our tickets... Return from Cape Town to Simon's Town... This cost us just 23,50 rand which at the time equated to about £2.30 - pretty good value if you ask me!

We walked, and walked, and walked (and got very wet as mentioned) until we reached Boulders Beach! I didn't realise it was part of the Table Mountain National Park but, there you go... I wish I could tell you an interesting story about each of the penguins, but I'm afraid I don't have any to tell. They all looked very cold and a few of them kept sneezing (which was quite cute, I'll admit). So instead, I'm going to flood the page with some penguin photos, all take by yours truly.

(I do think these two little things are adorable... they huddled together for a long time).

That's all for now! Rachel x

Cage diving with Great White sharks in South Africa

I went to South Africa on a field course trip through the University of Plymouth (second year). It was absolutely fantastic since we went out a week beforehand to do the usual touristy things. The highlight of the holiday was a cage diving trip with great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in Gansbaai. It truly was one of the best experiences of my life.

We were picked up at about 5.30am from our apartment just outside of Cape Town... Then we made a little stop off point (I can't remember where it was, I'm really bad at remembering that) to see a Southern Right Whale and her calf in the water. My camera is pretty poor for zoomed shots, but you can just see the calf below...

... Then a pretty standard shot of the beautiful coastline...

... Luckily I caught a photo of the calf breaching the water. It was beautiful to see (in person), unfortunately the camera doesn't do it justice.

This is just before we got onto the boat at Gansbaai...

... and this is our boat...

... this is the cage ...

... this is... a shark!

... Looking very cold!!!

Tuna head as bait, cage and shark

Shark...

... One of the best photos I took that day, it was fantastic...

... and the other cracking shot. Unfortunately my camera [as mentioned] isn't the best but I thought it was good timing at least!!

And there we have it!

Rachel x