When I first arrived in Cape Town in 2018, I will admit, I thought the beaches in the Eastern Cape were better, prettier than the beaches surrounding the Peninsula. I had recently moved from East London where warm water graced yellow sandy beaches, and water-lovers from children building sandcastles to paddlers populated the seaside. Cape Town’s beaches hosted cold water with brown, seaweed rotting openly on the high-water mark. I later discovered that the seaweed is called kelp.
I will, however, give credit to Cape Town’s clear water that exists mostly throughout the year, except when the Cape Doctors or South Easter (as it is climatically known) blows, churns up sediment and blurs the visibility. Clear water is something that is not mentioned in the Eastern Cape. You swim in murky – yet warm – water, at your own risk, and if you encounter a shark… well, good-luck to you.
I suppose it was this clear water that drew me to the recreational activity, freediving. In Cape Town, freediving involves a person squishing into a 7mm to 10mm wetsuit with a must-have hood to keep the brain warm; a weight belt to counteract the buoyant wetsuit; the usual mask and snorkel; and a meter-long set of fins. To say you will look like a penguin is understatement – you’ll probably look like a seal.
Into the icy waters I dove, with all my gear on, and the temperature siting at 17 degrees. It was a warm day. With face in the water, my mask created a window into another dimension – the kelp forest dimension. The word ‘kelp’ originates from the 14th century and means, “any of various large brown seaweeds (of the order, Laminariales)”. In Europe in the 16th century, kelp was burnt to make soda ash which was used in glassmaking. The ash was seen as “faulty” due to its colour and in Latin was called culpe (think culprit). This word morphed into “kelp”, and so the name was given to the ash and the seaweed. This kelp dimension is unique to this area of the African continent. It stretches from De Hoop Nature Reserve in South Africa to just south of the Kunene River in Namibia, the only coastline on the continent able to grow the brown seaweed.
As I hovered above the kelp forest, the split-fan kelp (Laminaria pallida) waved with the current. The other variant, the sea bamboo (Ecklonia maxima), reminded me of the Truffula trees in Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax. The kelp stand with an anchoring system, known as a holdfast, to the granite boulders that line the shallow waters around the Table Mountain National Park. A stripe leads from the holdfast stretching towards the sun until it splits into blades. The sea bamboo can grow up to 17 meters.
With my heart rate stable, my mind calm, I inhaled and duck-dived down, letting the gravity of the liquid atmosphere pull me to the bottom. Sunlight danced between the blades of kelp while pillars of shade moved this way and that. When still in the forest, I felt the life of it in action. The kelp ‘breathes’ through photosynthesis. They take carbon dioxide in and release oxygen into the water around them – helping to contribute to the deacidification of the ocean and acting as a carbon sink, something used to counteract greenhouse gas damage in Earth’s atmosphere. Reflecting on the life-source of kelp reminded me of a conversation I recently had had with Professor John Bolton from the Marine Research Institute at the University of Cape Town, who described kelp forests as being “as productive per unit as a tropical rain forest”. It is not only the kelp that gives life but the whole forest too. Sea urchins, West Coast rock lobsters and abalone (perlamoen) seek food and shelter around the ‘roots’ of the kelp trees. Between the understory and canopy layer; fish, various sharks, and rays traffic through the tall, stripes; some hoping to avoid their neighbour for fear of being dinner. Phytoplankton and krill bounce around the bushy tips of the forest, enjoying the benefits of the sun. I remember meeting a man the other day who had encountered a whale passing through the kelp for a belly rub.
My apnea body weaved through the forest, and like a monkey I moved from one stripe to the next. While holding onto a stripe, I looked closely at the kelp blades and noticed bite marks, probably from an otter, snail, or abalone. But humans consume kelp too. Kelp is packed with a host of vitamins and minerals and is famously known for being rich in iodine. As you can imagine then, kelp is used in weight loss tablets, used for cancer prevention and thyroid regulation. Bolton explained to me that kelp is used in nutraceuticals because of its bio-active effects. Our consumer market has now tapped into producing kelp smoothies, kelp pastas, kelp tacos and kelp powder for shakes. It’s the new kale, basically.
A human can’t stay underwater forever, nor can they stay in water forever. I left the ocean and de-kitted in the parking lot of Windmill Beach. I looked out over False Bay to see lines of kelp heads popping out of the water all along the bay. Around 25% of the world’s coastlines are lined with the kelp biome. Unfortunately, about 35% of kelp forests are in decline globally due to increases in sea temperature, food change structures and water turbidity. Fortunately for South Africa, our kelp is thriving, but Bolton warns that the ecosystem is under threat because of human greed and action.
My freedive experience was conducted in a Marine Protected Area (MPA) and is the reason why my experience was so captivating. Since moving to Cape Town, I have fallen in love with freediving. I have fallen in love with the kelp and the life it supports as a kelp forest. I no longer look with the same eyes at Cape Town’s beaches – with its cold, clear water and brown seaweed rotting on the high-water mark.
Distribution of kelp forests around the world
Photo by: Maximilian Dörrbecker