5 minute read
SQUID PRO QUO
Text & Images by Don Hunter
As coined by intrepid photographer Jean Tresfon, who started me on this adventure in St Francis Bay, Eastern Cape province of South Africa with renowned watermen Marc White, Steve Benjamin and Russel Saddler, diving into the gloomy emerald green waters in search of the elusive Squid (Loligo reynaudii) or Chokka.
These, rather tasty, cephalopods congregate off the Eastern Cape in these (rather) temperate waters in large numbers and in breeding season, which is mainly October- November, each year laying huge numbers of egg pods or strings, each of which contain around 100 eggs. These bright orange egg pods are attached to the sea bed in clusters that grow to cover extensive areas as subsequent females add their pods to the mass. It is an eerie world down there as there are a lot of large predators cruising around in the gloomy emerald green water.
The round ribbontail rays congregate in numbers, preying on the females, who are vulnerable while their heads are buried in the egg beds attaching their pods. The rays swim around the egg beds and then come in “hot” hoping to trap a female while she is laying. So when you are laying flat on the sand with your close-focus wide angle fisheye lens they swim over you and into you, mostly from behind, which can be a little disconcerting.
With the squid having a rather short lifespan of around 2 years there are also a lot of expired individuals to be hoovered up or cannibalised.
In the mix are any number of shark species including Ragged-tooth to spice the experience up.
Nothing appears to eat the egg pods but once the tiny millimetre sized squid hatch, in a massed birthing event when the water temperature rises, everything wants to eat them.
The strategy is thus to flood the water with as many tiny squid as possible in the hope that a few will survive. The real challenge to photographing this spectacle, scary predators not withstanding, is the rather poor visibility, with only a few metres being the norm.
The joke from the Cape divers is always “but it’s at least 6m, there being one metre in every direction, one up, one down, one in front” …. you get the picture.
What, for me, makes the images so stunning, other than the difficulty in getting them, is the very bright and unique colouring contrast of the green water and squid eggs.
You first need a very experienced waterman such as Marc to find the squid beds in a water depth shallow enough to dive on, which he has an uncanny knack of consistently being able to do. He does come from a squid background, both his father and he having been squid boat skippers so finding them everyday was an art honed over many years. The depth is rather critical in that doing a safety stop in very poor visibility when there are great white sharks around is tough on your mental wellbeing and as the joke goes “its preferable to take your BCD off at 5m and rather do your safety stop in the boat”. It is referable do shorter shallower dives than long safety stops.
Diving among the chokka during their annual gathering is not only an incredible visual feast but also a rare privilege. It offers a fleeting glimpse into the rich tapestry of life beneath the waves — complex, raw, and beautiful. These moments, when you're completely immersed in the natural rhythm of the ocean, are a reminder of why we dive in the first place: to witness the extraordinary and to reconnect with the wild heart of our planet.
