The Ocean Awaits You!

Aliwal Shoal Shark Diving February 2010

I was asked to summarize the past weekend, and all I could think of was 'Wow'!

Taking a trip down to Aliwal Shoal with the intention of diving with sharks...hmmm...many people asked us if we were crazy. However, this trip turned out to be absolutely fantastic! Aliwal Shaol lived up to its name by delivering some harsh ocean conditions and rough boat rides. East Rand SCUBA divers took on the challenge and believe me, we were rewarded.

On this trip, we were very priviledged to dive with the well-known Mark Addison and his team. After a thorough briefing early Friday morning, in which we gained so much more knowledge on sharks and their preservation, we went out to sea. During the four hours spent at sea, we were surrounded by shoals of Black-Tip Sharks. What an awesome experience! The water temperature was 25 degrees and visibility was in excess of 5m. Hovering around at a depth of merely 5-6m, we were constantly at eye-level with these magnificent animals. Many of them ventured so close to us that we could literally have touched them - and they weren't shy about swimming between our fins either! We couldn't believe our eyes when we saw some sharks breach - seeing a shark literally jump out of the water right next to us, was truly an unexpected rewarding sight.

But wait, we couldn't stop there! On our other dives, we saw Manta Rays, Blue-spotted Rays, many dolphins and turtles and yes, once again more sharks as well as beautiful Potato Bass, Devil Firefish and plenty more. Thankfully we got great photographs and some video footage. We even had a handful of divers who had the guts and did a night dive at Aliwal Shoal and were fortunate enough to obtain some more photographs on the dive.

This weekend trip was truly a great success. The weather was good, the accomodation was great, the company was good, the service was excellent and the dives were fantastic. We even had dry launches - now that's being spoilt! A sincere thanks to everyone who made this trip possible. Join us when we return on the Tiger Shark trip again in March 2011. See online bookings for further details.

Our Own Community

Friday, 22 January 2010 21:31 |

Written by Bryan Coetzee |

OUR COMMUNITY BEGINS

The community chat has just gone live and we would like to invite you all to visit the chat page. The page does require user registration the e-mail authentication.

We have set this up to encourage divers to chat with each other on a formal forum to allow any questions that you may have to be answered. Ask King Neptune all those questions about SCUBA or just talk to fellow divers about your diving experience. We will be monitoring this during the day and will answer any questions you may have. Should you wish to receive an answer via e-mail simply end your message with the words "Mail me" and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

We understand that there are some people out there that will try to abuse this system. Please remember that East Rand SCUBA is a family friendly dive school and we wouldn't want our little ones to read foul language. Any users of foul language will have their accounts deactivated.

Help us to grow the East Rand SCUBA community into something special. We look forward to chatting to you. Remember, East Rand SCUBA is also available on SKYPE - username "eastrandscuba".

A Busy Month!!!

A BUSY MONTH SO FAR

2010 has definitely kicked off with a bang. We have started two new Open Water Diver courses already this month and tomorrow night we start a fresh one again and look forward to seeing many new faces. We have again revamped the site and added quite a lot of content. I would like to ask you to look through the site and pass on any new ideas you may have. Anyone able to assist us in keeping the content updated, please give us a call.

Tonight the Ranger leaders are meeting to discuss the Ranger club for our 8 to 12 year olds. Anyone still interested in joining us, please give Bryan a call.

This week we are also starting our Shark specialty ahead of our Aliwal trip in 2 weeks. We will be covering Ocean Conservation and Shark Awareness, Tiger Shark, Black-Tip and Raggie. These course usually go for R3500 and we doing the course at R1500. What's better, you can pay it off. RSVP at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to secure your space.

Keep watching the site as new content will be going up daily.

Click here to view our contact page

Newsletter

Upcoming Events

Open Water Diver Course
Begin: 09.03.2010, 18:00
End: 21.03.2010, 17:00
Closing date: 09.02.2010, 12:00
Location: East Rand SCUBA, 3 Fourth Road, Cloverdene, Benoni
Learn to SCUBA Dive. This complete course will teach you what is needed to become a recreational diver.
Hits: 28
Booked spaces: 0
Free spaces: 10
Bookings: 0

Advanced Open Water Diver
Begin: 15.03.2010, 18:00
End: 21.03.2010, 17:00
Closing date: 11.03.2010, 12:00
Location: East Rand SCUBA, 3 Fourth Road, Cloverdene, Benoni
Advanced Open Water Diver
Hits: 6
Booked spaces: 0
Free spaces: 10
Bookings: 0

Simply Ponta
Begin: 25.03.2010, 00:00
End: 28.03.2010, 17:00
Closing date: 22.03.2010, 12:00
Location: Simply SCUBA, Ponta do Ouro, Mozambique
Simply Ponta
Hits: 5
Booked spaces: 0
Free spaces: 20
Bookings: 0

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