Muizenberg Surf Report – 7 December
14:30
The wind has swung cross-offshore, hopefully straight offshore tomorrow. Swell is 1-2ft, quite clean but the banks are messed up from 2 weeks of onshore conditions. Fun for a longboard, not for a shortboard – also needs more tide: high at 19:20
December 7th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Any idea what makes the water so messy? Bits of stuff – wood or something – in the water today.
December 7th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
They probably opened up the river hey… or the ‘stop-go’ construction site is throwing excess garbage back into st.james?
December 7th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Ja … apart from the litter I thought it was river muck.
December 7th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
For the last few years I’ve had a conspiracy theory about the river… (no-one really cares about conspiracies or corruption in South Africa though). Muizies has had a ‘blue flag’ status for the last 2 years (or more?) – read more here: http://www.southafrica.info/travel/surf/blueflagbeaches.htm
Everyone knows how filthy the river that flows into ‘rivers’ or ‘supertubes’ is, so I totally believe that the local yellow bulldozer blocks up that river every time the inspector comes round, and after inspection, they unblock the river to stop it from stagnating.
I can assure you that in the peak of summer, with a mass of holiday toxins and litter floating about in the water, muizies would NEVER be granted a ‘blue flag’ status…
have your say
December 8th, 2009 at 11:47 am
I’ve been trying to figure this out for a while. It was the same during December last year.
I think it’s probably two things: one is the large number of people on the beaches on the weekend, since it is almost always cleaner on week days apart from peak season. I think that accounts for all the chip packets, plastic bags and drink bottles.
The sediment must be coming from the river. I think what happens is onshore winds push all the sediment flowing out of the river back towards the beach. During winter all that stuff must be pushed out to sea.
I’ve heard that the dark colour of the water is also the result of some sort of organism that flourishes when the South Easter blows.
Anyway, there’s no way it’s a Blue Flag beach, I nearly threw up in the water yesterday it was so dirty, it was feckin horrible, plus the water is so murky the shark spotters don’t have a chance.
I reckon we should campaign to have the beach lose its Blue Flag status so that authorities can address this situation.
December 8th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Ahoy there
Most conditioned surfers are used to the occasional brown water occurrence around Muizenberg and all the way up to Cemetery. It’s well manky, but yeah, I think it is some sort of natural algal bloom. I’ve caught a few eye infections surfing in ‘brown water’ conditions – it may be a natural occurrence but it’s certainly not healthy!
The unnatural and unacceptable issue is the litter (chip packets, plastic bags, tissues, plastic bottles) which you will frequently have to paddle through in the peak of summer. There are also those days like yesterday when you know that the water has been contaminated somehow because of the strange objects floating about (wood chips, grass, things that look like seaweed but aren’t…)
That said, every now and then
I do an early surf report, and at 6 – 8am there is a major team working at muizies when most people are smacking their alarm clocks or force feeding their children before school. There’s a small team that sweeps all the sand off the walkway, a big team that picks up all the litter and kelp on the beach and another team that cleans the parking lot. On a Friday morning, the beach is pretty spotless before the masses arrive, and by the end of the weekend they start all over again.
Who knows what the solution is? There are dozens of bins but people ain’t using them. The lazy weekend crowd pull in for a sunny Saturday and leave chaos behind at the end of the day.
And I still have my river theory, I’ve seen the river mouth forcibly blocked about 3 times by a 2 metre-plus wall of sand, pushed in by the local bulldozer. The only reason I can see for that is for the ‘blue flag’ status.
What we CAN do is tune people who we see littering, and do our best to pick up any litter we see – even if it’s manky.