10 bizzare things that happened in SA beaches in 2015
With a a coastline stretching more than 2 500km from Namibia to Mozambique, it's understandable than in 2015, we witnessed some pretty bizarre incidents one these shores.
When a 13-year-old Angela Harris filled a glass bottle with a few personal items as well as a letter telling the recipient how to get hold of her and buried it on Dana Bay beach just outside Mossel Bay, she probably hoped for a much speedier return.
14 years down the line - the 27-year-old from Meyersdal has been
notified of its receipt after a beachcomber using a metal detector came
across it over the weekend.
In the letter she describes herself,
shares her address and telephone number and encourages whoever finds it
to contact her. Along with this she put her favourite necklace, a ring
belonging to her little sister, the wrapper of her favourite chocolate
as well as a sachet of the shampoo she used at the time.
South African nudists let it all loose over this year’s Easter weekend when the continent's first official naturist beach opened despite objections from some locals.
A 500-metre stretch of Mpenjati Beach, which lies on the Indian Ocean, received local government approval to become an official nudist venue.
Filmed in Mossel Bay, a video taken and shared by YouTube user, Remo Sabatini, starts with rather chilling footage of one of these massive predators chowing on a rope dangling from the side of the boat. It's all teeth and gills and beady little eyes.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, another shark breaches spectacularly in the background, stealing its hungry mate's toothy show
Footage of a dramatic rescue effort of a Great White shark that had been hooked by a fisherman on a Plettenberg Bay beach showed how locals saved the apex predator by grabbing it by the tail and dragging it back into the ocean.
A very strange-looking fish washed up on Melkbos Beach along Cape Town's West Coast in February.
Katherine Small took a picture and posted it to Facebook saying she found the fish lying on the beach, half alive, as seagulls poked its eyes out.
Small said beach goers managed to chase the birds away and throw the fish back into the water, but it seemed unlikely that it would survive.
Everyone hit the beach last summer… including an enormous black Mole snake in Mossel Bay.
Petro Rossouw and her mother were walking on the beach in the Fransmanshoek Conservancy just south of Mossel Bay when they spotted a stick in shallow water, covered in sand.
They were practically on top of it before they saw it for what it was: a massive, fat and shiny snake!
When proudly South African, Durban-based water photographer, Marck Botha shared his photographs of Durbs’ waves, the world gasped!He shared some of his photos with us.
The head of Shark Cage Diving KZN John Miller sent Traveller24 pics of two Great Whites on the south coast off Durban’s shore.
These sharks aren’t typically found in KZN, and Miller said it was a one-in-a-million chance that they got to see them here on a dive in Durban.
It took 40mins to rescue a 15-metre humpback whale after it had become entangled in the ropes and buoys of a Rock lobster research project one nautical mile off-shore of Olifantsbospunt in Cape Point in July this year.
Luckily, thanks to the National Sea Rescue Institute and SA Whale Disentanglement Network, chances are very good the whale survived.
10. When a pro-surfer fought off a Great White shark on live telly in JBay
After the hugely publicised incident involving three-time world champion, Mick Fanning fighting off a Great White shark during the final of the J-Bay Open, an international surfing tournament in Jeffreys Bay which was broadcast live – the internet exploded with hilarious takes on the incident.