Nov 09 2020
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Nile Crocodile @ Lake Sibaya – Sodwana Bay

By Sodwana Bay

Characteristics and physiology: Adult Nile crocodiles have a dark bronze colouration above, with faded blackish spots and stripes variably appearing across the back and a dingy off-yellow on the belly, although mud can often obscure the crocodile’s actual colour. The flanks, which are yellowish-green in colour, have dark patches arranged in oblique stripes in highly variable patterns. Some variation occurs relative to environment; specimens from swift-flowing waters tend to be lighter in colour than those dwelling in murkier lakes or swamps, which provides camouflage that suits their environment, an example of clinal variation. Nile crocodiles have green eyes. The colouration also helps to camouflage it; juveniles are grey, multicoloured, or brown, with dark cross-bands on the tail and body. The underbelly of young crocodiles is yellowish green. As it matures, Nile crocodiles become darker and the cross-bands fade, especially those on the upper-body. A similar tendency in coloration change during maturation has been noted in most crocodile species. Source: WikiPedia Watch the Nile Crocodile in action below! Don’t forget to like, subscribe and hit the bell icon to get notified of each new video! Its FREE!!! [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJTWkdjcXJw[/embedyt] Below is a picture of our Very First encounter with a rather large Nile Crocodile. We kinda disturbed it with the drone and the croc in the photo was fleeing into the water to get away from the noise! Compared to our first Nile Crocodile this Croc is still a baby! Much smaller than the first croc this one was a little more confident and stayed a little longer before retreating to the water, allowing the drone to get a really good closeup of this croc! Fun Facts about the Nile Crocodile: If you ever visiting Sodwana Bay, find out where Lake Sibaya is and make a day trip out of it! If you look hard enough you might be able to find a living log floating in the water or basking on the shoreline! Lake Sibaya is home to 2 highly aggressive marine animals – The Nile Crocodile and Hippos! So unless you can still see your feet in the water and don’t see any signs of Hippo or Crocodile activity, don’t swim in the Lake! Here is something we can all learn from the Nile Crocodile – Respect your elders! Nile Crocodiles are one of the few crocodile species that like to socialise… They don’t mind sharing an extra large meal or a school of fish. As long as there is enough they not picky who shares a meal with them… As long as you respect the hierarchy. The oldest and largest male always gets first debs on everything, the best piece of meat, fish and even the best basking spot. Sometimes the younger males can get a little cocky and challenge the alpha. That is a really poor choice on their part, since often times the younger male will be seriously injured or even killed in the fight…. Come on, everybody knows you don’t take on something that is bigger and stronger than you! Nile Crocodiles are the second largest crocodiles in the world and also the second largest reptile! They come short of the Salt Water crocodile that is the largest Reptile in the world… Most people already know this, but the crocodile is considered to be a living dinosaur that became smaller as it evolved! Well I feel privileged to have been able to see a living dinosaur in its natural habitat! Nile Crocodiles have been recorded in 26 different countries in Africa. That s a lot of habitat to fill… The IUCN has not declared these crocodiles as endangered just yet as they are so vastly spread and while in some area these crocodiles are thriving in other areas they are going extinct. Unfortunately Lake Sibaya’s crocodiles are being poisoned by a pesticide that is designed to cull malaria! Crocodiles can regenerate their teeth. I guess when you such an aggressive apex predator you do tend to loose a couple teeth along the way! Crocodiles have cone like teeth that make it much harder to loosen their grip, not to mention their powerful jaws! Crocodiles are also super fond of death rolls drowning their prey in the water, which I can imagine sometimes can take a tooth or 2 down with it!   It seems like the more southern the Nile Crocodile is, the smaller it gets… This is quite strange! In the most southern part of Africa the Nile Crocodiles only grow up to 4 m long! Well maybe we just over eager, but I think our Croc was around 5 m long. The Nile crocodile is the most common crocodile in Africa, since it is very widespread over the whole continent… Once again the Saltwater Crocodile is the only one to top the Nile Croc, since it is even more widely spread! Since the Saltwater crocodile can live in saltwater and freshwater, although it still prefers Saltwater – hence the name! Here are all the countries and places you will be able to find these rather large crocs –  Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Egypt, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Gabon, Angola, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Sudan, South Sudan, Botswana, and Cameroon. The Nile crocodile’s current range of distribution extends from the regional tributaries of the Nile in Sudan and Lake Nasser in Egypt to the Cunene of Angola, the Okavango Delta of Botswana, and the Olifants River in South Africa and of course the largest fresh water Lake in South Africa – Lake Sibaya. Be super careful in any unknown water space… Crocodiles are not picky when it comes to water to inhabit as long as its freshwater… Crocodiles are known to inhabit – brackish waters, lakes, fast or slow moving rivers, dams and estuaries… From time to time although very rare these crocodiles have been sited in the sea close to shorelines… All crocodiles posses salt glands, but oddly enough these glands are absent in alligators and caimans! While crocodiles are actually quite slow moving on land (very rarely reaching speeds of 18km/h) in…

Sep 14 2020
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Tom’s Fishing Guide @ Sodwana Bay

By Sodwana Bay

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbgMzToeSoo[/embedyt] A hilarious video of Tom tryna fish for the first time in the the sea… Needless to say fishing from the rocks/shore sounds much easier then it truly is! Super funny video made to brighten up your day, loads of bloopers, strange and funny mistakes made. PS. We still have not caught a fish!

Mar 18 2020
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Snorkeling at Sodwana Bay ~ South Africa – GoPro Hero

By Sodwana Bay

Great news Guys – We have a brand new video for you guys – We’ve reached our 11th video and still going strong… Special thanks to everybody who has joined in our journey and continues to support us every step of the way! This is an epic video of a taste of all the exciting things we did at Sodwana Bay in February… Unfortunately our song is just to short to show you all our super exciting moments… Enjoy this epic short video!!! Send us an email about any exotic or scary encounters you have had under the water or on land and your story might go viral! Please go checkout our  Patreon Page Below… We wanna start giving you guys who are committed to us exclusive content and be able to further our channel and provide better content to our Patrons… To do this we need funds and all the support we can get… Also check out our YouTube Channel when you done reading this… Every view is one step closer to our goal, we need 4000 hours of our subscribers views and 1000 Subscribers to be able to start making money and better content for you guys, YouTube is free please watch all our videos till the end… and subscribe – It’s Free – if you haven’t already and don’t forget to share the video when you done.

Mar 11 2020
0

Snorkeling at Sodwana Bay ~ South Africa – GoPro Hero – Our 11th Video

By Sodwana Bay

Whoohoo another amazing video added to our Youtube channel > GO SODWANA BAY!… This is a cool mashup of Sodwana Bay February 2020. This is only a really small part of all the exciting things we did this month… Unfortunately our song was to short and still busy tryna figure out the best way to mash songs together! Enjoy the Video Below… Hope you are as inspired as I am!!! Come visit Sodwana Bay! Watching this video and listening to this song really takes me back to my childhood… I guess at least 50% or more of us have a really fearful up bringing… We are literally taught to BE scared of the world… We are told never to go out at night alone, that we shouldn’t speak to strangers, we should never walk in the woods/forest/bushes, never approach a strange animal, don’t swim in lakes and ponds etc – etc. While most of these things are merited, I disagree with most of what my parents taught me in any case, I never did drugs, smoked or drank alcohol as a child, as an adult I keep drinking too a minimum… I am super grateful for the warnings against those dangers, but my parents also tried to teach me to be fearful of all the good things in the world, stepping out of bounds such as walking in bushes, just breaking away from society to be alone… As a child there use to be a type of forest behind most the neighborhoods we lived in. Trust me if there was something to find I found it… I loved it, it gave me incentive to walk my dogs each day and just find a quiet place far away from people… The thing I hated most was that my parents never approved so it was me and my best friend (my dog) little secret. I can relate so well to this song… I don’t claim to be brave, or recklessly stupid, I am well informed of the dangers in my environment. But just as this song may suggest, I am facing every fear head on. If Sodwana Bay has taught me anything it would be – Don’t be afraid of everything – Knowledge is not always power – If you respect nature it respects you – Just because something has the power to hurt you or kill you doesn’t mean that is it’s main goal – Don’t run from your fears rather take them head-on – Most times they more scared of you than you are of them it just depends on who folds first… Like I said before this song has great meaning to me… Don’t be afraid to break free from the curse of fear… Being brave always brings change – So break free of your fears and start LIVING!!!! Send us an email about any exotic or scary encounters you have had under the water or on land and your story might go viral! Please go checkout our  Patreon Page Below… We wanna start giving you guys who are committed to us exclusive content and be able to further our channel and provide better content to our Patrons… To do this we need funds and all the support we can get… Also check out our YouTube Channel when you done reading this… Every view is one step closer to our goal, we need 4000 hours of our subscribers views and 1000 Subscribers to be able to start making money and better content for you guys, YouTube is free please watch all our videos till the end… and subscribe – It’s Free – if you haven’t already and don’t forget to share the video when you done.

Mar 05 2020
0

A spiny Venomous Fish – The Lion Fish @ Sodwana Bay

By Sodwana Bay

Pterois is a genus of venomous marine fish, commonly known as lionfish, native to the Indo-Pacific. Also called zebrafish, firefish, turkeyfish, tastyfish or butterfly-cod, it is characterized by conspicuous warning coloration with red, white, creamy, or black bands, showy pectoral fins, and venomous spiky fin rays. Pterois radiata, Pterois volitans, and Pterois miles are the most commonly studied species in the genus. Pterois species are popular aquarium fish. P. volitans and P. miles are recent and significant invasive species in the west Atlantic, Caribbean Sea and Mediterranean Sea. We found one of the coolest, but unfortunately most destructive fish in the ocean… The Lion Fish. We will get into what the difference is poison vs venom in a later article, but for now all you need to know about this fish is that it is Venomous, not poisonous… No matter if it is poisonous or venomous try stay clear of the creature when you encounter it. I wish these gorgeous Fish were not so destructive in the environment, otherwise I would add them to my favorite marine animal list… Luckily in Sodwana Bay their natural predators live there too so they can keep them sort of at Bay! While on our way back to shore we still enjoy keeping a look out in all rock pools for fish in case we find something cool or dangerous… On this occasion we were super lucky to find a lion fish. I knew lion fish eat live on coral reefs, but never thought that they would live in such shallow waters or be so near to shore, or could be found in South African waters for that matter, most cool things happen overseas not South Africa… Although I am starting to realize South Africa is a much cooler place than I thought especially when you leave the big cities!!! Somehow I imagined Lion Fish being much bigger, maybe we just found a juvenile one or they really are just so small… If that’s the case it is scary to think that such a small fish could make such a big negative influence in the ocean! Photo’s always seem to make these little fish look so much bigger than they truly are! A few fun facts about this animal and why you should be careful when swimming with them: Lion Fish – hence the name – are carnivores… They prey on small fish, practically any fish that will fit in their mouths, but they are not mindless fish that just eat what ever comes into their paths… They are predatory intelligent fish, observation might suggest that they blow out jets of water to disorient their prey and to make them face them – common knowledge these fish have picked up on – head first equals less energy usage. There are 16 different species of Lion Fish LionFish predators can have been confirmed are: themselves, Larger LionFish will eat their smaller counterparts with no hesitation, make sense with a huge appetite like theirs… Other fish like these also enjoy snacking on Lion Fish which helps keep their population to the right size: sharks, cornetfish, grouper, large eels, frogfish and other scorpionfish This is a sad fact, unfortunately in the Atlantic oceans where most fish feel uncomfortable living in, the Lion Fish Thrives! Why is this a bad thing? Well their natural predators hate the cold… Without any natural predators to keep their population at bay, and them being a natural predator of other fish their circle of life has hole in it and unwanted holes are never a good thing. The invasive Lionfish of the Atlantic ocean has a devastating impact on coral cleaning and eating fish, without the coral cleaner fish the coral might not be able to survive because there is to much debris for the coral to breath…   Wow here’s an interesting fact – Lion Fish Stomachs can expand up to 30 times its normal size… Imagine how many fish go into that! Now I understand why lion Fish are so invasive, they reproduce all year round, a mature female can lay up to 2 million eggs a year, that’s insane, imagine we could reproduce like that, there would be no space left on the planet to move! I guess it nearly impossible to see a baby LionFish when born they are only 2.5 cm long and an grow up to -38 cm long as adults! That is quite small for a fish that has such a huge impact on the oceanic environment. I doubt even a Megalodon Shark (Largest shark known to have existed) could make such a big impact… They can live up to 15 years in the wild, imagine what impact each one of them can have on the environment in 15 years! When a lion fish’s spines puncture flesh they have two(2) venom glands in their backbone that rush out poison through the spines… Depending on how many spines stung you, you shouldn’t be much in the danger zone, of course it also depends on your body tolerance for pain. It mild cases, you will have extreme pain and sweating… In extreme cases you could experience – respiratory distress or even paralysis… Scientists encourage fishing for LionFish… Below is campaign that encourages people to even eat LionFish, as long as you know what to eat they are not poisonous, just be careful for their spines! If you like fishing next time try catch one of these spiny fish and give it a try! “Lionfish as Food” campaign In 2010, NOAA began a campaign to encourage the consumption of the fish. The “Lionfish as Food” campaign encourages human hunting of the fish as the only form of control known to date. Encouraging the consumption of lionfish could not only help to maintain a reasonable population density, but also provide an alternative fishing source to overfished populations, such as grouper and snapper. NOAA also encourages people to report lionfish sightings, to help track lionfish population dispersal. To promote the campaign, the Roman Catholic Church in Colombia agreed to have their clergy’s sermons suggest to their parishioners (84% of the population) to eat the fish species on Fridays, Lent and Easter, which proved highly successful to decrease the invasive fish problem. When properly…

Jan 30 2020
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The shy one was sighted – Thread-Fin Butterfly @ Sodwana Bay

By Sodwana Bay

Everybody who has ever snorkeled or dived and tried to take a video or pic of a butterfly fish knows how hard that can be. Its rare enough to actually find a butterfly fish, especially in rocky reef areas, where they usually live. We have only spotted the raccoon butterfly fish a hand full of times and even more rarely been able to capture it on camera. But this time instead of finding the more common raccoon butterfly fish, we spotted a new kind of Butterfly – The Thread-fin Butterfly fish. They might be a bit more of a common variety but this is the first one we have ever seen in Sodwana Bay’s Waters. They usually swim in pairs and like any other butterfly are very elusive and wary of everything. Research suggests that they usually swim in pairs and are monogamous (Stick to one partner), although they will choose a new partner in crime if one should die. Sounds like most humans… This one unfortunately did not have a partner, which would suggest it is either still to young or hasn’t chosen a life partner yet. Thread-fin’s can grow up to 23 cm(9in) long and lives in water depths of 1 – 35m (3-115ft) deep. Fun fact they also darken their colors and night. No-one knows why.