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Protea Banks

Protea Banks is the most challenging dive site in Southern Africa and for several years, we did not offer it as the existing dive club had safety issues. For the past six months, we have been diving with a relatively new club with whom we are very impressed. The quality of this club and the huge variety of large sharks seen at Protea has persuaded us to drop our historic two days diving in Sodwana Bay in favour of two days diving at Prtotea Banks.

In order to ensure that our divers get the very best sightings at Protea, we are doing four dives over two days. The first dive is normally a baited dive with a following reef dive. On the second day, standard is two reef dives though there is the option of again doing one baited and one reef dive at a supplemental cost. We emphisise that these are baited dives meaning that we use rotten sardines in a sealed container to attract the large shark species but no actual feeding of the sharks takes place.

 

On our baited dive at Protea Banks, the species which we expect to see are varied with the season:-

Bull sharks (called Zambezis locally) are virtually year around residents.

Tiger shark are most numerous February -June and again in October and November.

Copper sharks can be seen June to November.

Spotted Ragged Tooth sharks May to November sometimes in massive numbers.

Scalloped Hammerheads also can be in large numbers from October to April.

The Oceanic Blacktip Shark another year around resident.

Minimum requirements for Protea :-

A qualification allowing dives to 40 metres. Our baited dives are are at relatively shallow depths but the reefs here are deep. Lesser experienced divers sometimes get carried away with excitement with the sharks and loose concentration on their depth in the water. We do not want to risk any divers suddenly realising they are amongst very large sharks and at depths they have never visited before.

At least 50 dives preferably including some 'stress' diving.

All divers must carry a surface marker buoy. Divers who loose contact with the main group can be difficult to locate on the surface without the use of a marker buoy.

 

 

Sophie Verdoux from Mayotte says 'My unbelievable shark dive 6 January 2018 with Peter Griffiths of Discovering Africa Safaris'. In one 50 minute dive we saw 6 shark species --6 Bull sharks, a Silvertip,a Dusky, Oceanic Blacktip, lots of Scalloped Hammerheads and a huge 4 1/2 metre Tiger shark.Click

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