My name is John Esposito. I am a sophomore at the University of Notre Dame majoring in environmental science, and this is the story of how I was able to do amazing research, swim with sharks, go on sailboat adventures, and become part of family that was over 7,000 miles away from where I live. This is the story of my experience at CAPE RADD. It was late April of 2018, and I had nothing Read more…
Ask any regular False Bay diver where the best place to spot nudibranchs is, and you will almost certainly be directed towards A-Frame. We put this to the test.
“A most stately thing and the fairest cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth.” Constrasting currents of southern Africa.
Waterfront Charters don’t only offer the best scheduled and charter cruise options at the V&A Waterfront. Behind the scenes our organisation is focused very strongly on the environment we love and that serves as our playground. The threats to our oceans are many, varied and very real. Some threats we can only talk about and educate – there is little that we can do to change the environment in the Pacific Ocean, for instance, where Read more…
Removing kelp without a permit? Removing kelp within the Boulders Restriced Zone? That’s poaching my friend
On the 24th October 2018, the Department of Environmental Affairs announced that the South African government will be increasing their Marine Protected Area (MPA) cover from its current 0.4% to 5% by introducing 22 new off shore MPA’s in areas around South Africa that have been recognized as important species biodiversity marine ecosystems thanks to Kerry Sink and her team at SANBI. How can we protect our MPA’s? The biggest cause for concern after a Read more…
Are you more Plastic or Planet this Christmas? Christmas is one of the top two retail shopping seasons of the year, generating roughly $680 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. Americans spend an average of $967 for items such as decorations, gifts and festive foodstuffs during the holiday season (https://www.gobankingrates.com/saving-money/holiday/how-much-americans-spend-christmas/). The toy industry is massive. It hit $20.36 billion in sales last year and shows no sign of slowing down ― nor does the negative impact Read more…
Out with the Old… Several months back I wrote a blog detailing a preliminary method for classifying kelp from satellite imagery, based on some methods from researchers in California. We drew a couple conclusions from this. Namely, that the resolution of the LANDSAT imagery was not high enough for the relatively small kelp forests along the Cape coast. I would like to revisit the original workflow by using some new data, and a different approach, Read more…
There are over 2,000 species of fish found in South African waters, 16% of which are endemic, meaning they don’t occur anywhere else! South Africa represents an eclectic mix of marine habitats ranging from coastal sandy and rocky shores, estuaries, reefs and kelp forests, to off-shore sea mounts, shelf edges, canyons and mud flats. But there is a real concern for these ecosystems and their over exploitation and destruction through pressures such as commercial fishing Read more…
rayshader is a new R package from Tyler Morgan-Wall that makes creating beautiful hillshaded maps dead easy! Check out this quick demo of Table Mountain I threw together.