We’ll start with a confession: That headline was stolen from the trip’s brochures. However, there simply isn’t any better way to describe it! A real ‘bucket list’ experience, this trip had been on our radar for years, ever since we saw the photography and videography of travel writer and underwater photographer, Pier Nirandara, a seasoned veteran of the run.
It was Pier who had first written about the Sardine Run in the March 2020 issue of Divers for the Environment, and following her journeys on her Instagram account over the years finally convinced us to put down the considerable fee and take the plunge!
The KwaZulu-Natal Sardine Run is a natural phenomenon that occurs every year between May and July, when billions of sardines, or more specifically the Southern African pilchard, Sardinops sagax ocellatus, spawn in the cool waters of the Agulhas Bank and move northward along the east coast of South Africa.
Known as the "Blue Serengeti,” after the vast plains that serve as a migratory route for millions of wildebeest, the Sardine Run was so named because in terms of sheer biomass, researchers estimate the sardine run could in fact rival East Africa's great wildebeest migration. The individual shoals are often more than 7km long, 1.5km wide and 30 metres deep and are clearly visible from spotter planes or from the surface.
A migration of forage fish of such colossal scale could never fail to attract larger predators, and so the Sardine Run brings with it a spectacular parade of marine megafauna comprising various species of seabird, sharks, whales, dolphins and more.
Heading out of the sleepy coastal town of Port St Johns on lightweight, rapid and agile RIBs (rigid inflatable boats), you’ll follow these migrations in search of ‘action’, when a concentration of activity caused by dolphins herding sardines into bait balls creates an underwater show you’ll never forget!
ALIWAL SHOAL
However, the Sardine Run experience starts about 200km North of Port St Johns, at the Blue Ocean Dive Resort in eMkhomazi, also known as Umkomaas, just South of Durban. We did the nine-day package, which includes a two-night stay in Umkomaas for a day’s diving at the infamous Aliwal Shoal, a series of reefs that are home to a large concentration of spotted ragged-tooth sharks (Carcharias taurus).
Upon arrival at Durban airport, you’ll be picked up for your transfer to the Blue Ocean Dive Resort, a comfortable dive hostel with a welcoming atmosphere and, most importantly, a lively bar! Here you’ll spend your first evening sampling the commendable pizzas from the wood-fired pizza oven and getting to know your friendly dive guides.
The following morning you’ll be up at sunrise to prep your gear, before piling into the pickup for the trip down to the beach, where the RIB launches from. This is is an adventure in itself, as the boat has to launch off of the beach, and the exact spot depends on the currents and the tides. On our launch, we had to go off the banks of a river that fed into the ocean. Once the boat is in the water, we climbed aboard, pushed our feet under the toe straps, and grabbed on for dear life.
After the word from the skipper, we brace ourselves as the boat launches over the waves coming in from the sea, and for about 20 seconds your only task is to avoid falling out of the boat. Thankfully, we were all successful in that task, so once out to sea we headed off to our first dive site.
The sea conditions dictate how many dives you can do, but thankfully we were able to get two dives in, one at Raggies Cave and one at the Channel. Visibility was also better than usual, though not superb, ranging from 15 to 20 metres, so we had a reasonable view of everything going on around us.
Which was good, because the spotted ragged-tooth sharks surrounded us as soon as we descended at Raggies Cave. As a nocturnal species, raggies are thankfully very docile during daylight hours, and if they’re not swimming slowly about, they’re nestled in the canyons and under overhangs throughout the reef.
Sharks are always growing new teeth, and are therefore constantly shedding the old ones, so keep your eyes peeled for teeth littering the seabed, and you may come away with a few souvenirs!
Other species to look out for include green turtles, and big potato groupers if you’re lucky!
After the second dive, we were all feeling a bit chilly, and the surface conditions had worsened, so we called it and headed back to the resort to sort our gear for the next day’s transfer, before a little après dive and pizza!
PORT ST JOHNS
After your second night, the third day is taken up by the 5 to 6-hour transfer by minivan South to Port St Johns, a small town of about 6,500 people situated at the mouth of the Umzimvubu River on the Wild Coast in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
Our lodging for the duration was The Spotted Grunter Resort, located on the riverbank about a kilometre upriver from the mouth of the Umzimvubu. Named after a fish that populates the river, The Spotted Grunter is a fishing resort for most of the year, but from May to July, hundreds of divers and marine wildlife enthusiasts from across the world descend on the resort for the infamous Sardine Run.
After a first night settling in, and getting to know everyone in the dinner hall, it’s off to bed for an early rise the next morning. We were heading off down the river on the RIB with our skipper James and guide Matt at a chilly 7am, before being treated to a gorgeous sunrise as you reach the mouth. Here, once again it’s lifejackets on and hold on for dear life, as James pilots the RIB through the waves to get us out to sea.
The event that everyone has come to witness is a ‘bait ball’, which occurs when a pod of Common Dolphins cooperates to herd a bunch of sardines together, and circle them to keep them in place while each of them take turns zooming through the bait ball to feed.
This also attracts other predators such as dusky sharks, blacktips, and even Bryde’s whales (if you’re really lucky – we were not), and all the action is punctuated by gannets hitting the water like torpedoes and plunging down to depths of up to 20m. Surprisingly good swimmers, they’ll then spend up to a minute hunting the sardines before surfacing.
The first telltale sign of some action is a large flock of gannets circling a patch of water overhead. This will attract the attention of your skipper, who’ll take the RIB closer to look for sign number two – gannets dive-bombing the surface.
As you’re scrambling to get your gear on – hoodie, mask, snorkel, fins – he’ll assess the action, and if it looks good, he’ll give the order to drop in. The bait balls can range from a few hundred to a few thousand fish, and your group will form a line, staying off of the ball to avoid disturbing it while you watch the dolphins do their thing.
If the bait ball is big and stable enough, the guide may decide it’s worth heading back to the boat to gear up for a dive, as the action is, of course, best viewed from under the water!
As is always the case with nature, these bait balls are unpredictable phenomena. Some start moving, making it impossible to keep up. Others split up and dispel, and some just disappear entirely once the dolphins have had their fill.
Sometimes, a pod of the less industrious and cooperative bottlenose dolphins will show up and spoil the show completely by careening through the ball and sending the sardines scattering in all directions.
As a result, the whole experience mostly involves sitting on a boat for six to eight hours, jumping in and out of the water to catch whatever action you can. It can be a little exhausting pulling yourself into the boat over and over, so not everyone jumps in the water every time.
Throughout the trip, there will be a LOT of whale and dolphin spotting, which is hugely exciting if you’re a first timer like we were. If the humpback whales are in a good position, you can jump in for an encounter, which we were lucky enough to experience a few times.
Amazing as this was, it was not the highlight of our trip.
THE MOTHER OF ALL BAIT BALLS…
All the skippers of the Sardine Run boats are in constant contact to share news of promising action. On our first day out, our skipper James got a call from another of The Spotted Grunter boats, so we went to investigate.
We saw a cluster of boats under a big circling flock of gannets, but something else had caught James’ eye. Steering towards another circling flock about half a click away, as we approached we saw a riveting sight – hundreds of gannets dive-bombing the surface like a waterfall.
“This is a big one, get ready!” he shouts, and its go time.
We don masks and snorkels, and plunge into water to form up alongside Matt to see the ball.
Except we can’t. It’s just a giant, throbbing shadow beneath us, rippling and sparkling as the sun catches their scales, parting occasionally as a dusky shark darts up from beneath. A pulsating, amorphous mass, we can’t find the edge – it just seems to keep moving beneath us.
After a few minutes, we hear a breathless shout from Matt. “BACK ON THE BOAT, WE’RE GOING TO DIVE IT!”
So, it’s a frantic swim back to the boat to don our scuba gear, and get back into the water before we miss everything. We needn’t have worried…
As we descend, we are treated to something truly magnificent.
It is colossal, what must be a whole shoal of millions of sardines, fifty metres wide at the top, and forming a massive column plunging down to more than 30m in depth. Holding it in place are hundreds of common dolphins, circling it in a massive vortex, whilst others join the dusky sharks and blacktips, plunging in and out to enjoy this gargantuan feast.
And the sharks… we spotted around fifty swimming around us, and that’s just what we could see from our side – there must have been hundreds all around it.
While all this is going on, a deep, irregular boom reverberated in our ears, like a bass drum being pounded with no rhythm. At first, we couldn’t figure out what it was, until we looked up, and realised the booms coincided with the gannets dive bombing the water, leaving long trails behind them as they plunged into the mass of sardines.
It has to be one of the most primal, majestic and spectacular natural events that a human being can witness on this Earth.
James had radioed the other skippers, so within ten minutes, the others of our group from The Spotted Grunter had joined us. The ball was so large that it was still going strong when we reached our 50-bar limit after 45 mins, having spent a good part of it down at 20m.
As we surfaced, and for the rest of the day, it was the topic of discussion throughout the resort. The seasoned veterans hadn’t seen anything like it in a decade. The young pups had NEVER seen a ball like that.
It seems we had been extremely fortunate!
As with any wildlife experience, one should always bear in mind that nothing is ever guaranteed. For some visitors, the action might be limited. On a few rare occasions in the past, the Sardine Run has failed to materialise completely. Just remember that Blue Ocean and your dive resort staff have no control over what happens under the water, but will always make every possible effort to make sure you have a great time regardless.
If things are quiet, but some approaching whales are spotted, the skipper can position the boat ahead of their approach, and drop you in for some spectacular encounters. At one breathtaking instance, we came face-to-face with a humpback whale which passed within two to three metres of us before swimming gracefully off into the gloom. On another occasion a mother and calf swam majestically past. From the boat, we spotted multiple breaching humpback whales, and followed a Southern right whale for a while.
The same also applied to an approaching megapod of dolphins. It’s truly wonderful to dive down under the surface to witness hundreds of these beautiful animals swimming around you, with some of the more curious ones approaching to within a couple of feet for a closer look at you!
Species spotted by other groups and friends who took part in the Sardine Run this season include a great white shark, blue sharks, mako sharks and even orcas. As beautiful as they are, orcas are definitely the hooligans of the seas, and there is a risk that too many of them arriving will terrorise the other species away from the area. A friend doing the run separately to us reported seeing a pod of orcas killing a humpback calf for sport!
Another activity we opted for on a quiet day was to use one of our tanks to dive the Deep Reef dive site for another spotted ragged-tooth encounter. This was far more extreme than Aliwal Shoal – even in the limited visibility under 10m, there were scores of the sharks casually drifting around, some getting within a foot of you before turning away. We also spotted a potato grouper milling around on the reef, and the group had a field day collecting handfuls of the sharks’ teeth littering the reef.
However, this dive was COLD. After 20 minutes of shivering in 17°C at the bottom gulping air, we had to call it. Another thing to bear in mind, is that South Africa is a Southern Hemisphere country, and this migration takes place during their wintertime. Therefore, sea temperatures are chilly, varying between 23°C at the surface to 17°C at the bottom. A 5mm full-body wetsuit is the MINIMUM recommended, but we also went armed with 5mm hoodies, dive socks, and a 2mm neoprene vest to wear under the wetsuit. We STILL found it chilly at times, so if you’re used to the balmy sea temperatures of the UAE, be warned!
A must-do experience in Port St Johns is a trip up to the airstrip at the top of the mountain right next to the town of Port St John. Your resort will most likely arrange this as standard, but just check that they do, because you don’t want to miss the experience. It’s the strip where the Sardine Run’s spotter planes, mostly single engine light aircraft, land and take off from.
Being at the top of the mountain, it offers breathtaking views of the surrounding valleys and mountains, and is the perfect place to catch a spectacular sunset. A fun fact is that this also happens to be the shooting location of the last scene in the Leonardo DiCaprio film Blood Diamond, where the two main characters are fleeing up a mountainside towards the airstrip to be rescued by a plane, but a wounded Leonardo has to be left behind.
If you decide to skip a day on the boats (as some do, especially those on the 15-day package), and you’re feeling adventurous, local guides can also be hired to do some hiking on the surrounding hills. Some of the trails can be very overgrown though, so a machete might be a wise thing to take along.
A lot of visitors to the area also stop at the nearby Second Beach, a gorgeous and idyllic natural spot. However, it has a rather unfortunate status, as we discovered whilst researching the area for this article, as the world’s most deadly beach for shark attacks! There are warning signs on the beach, so take heed.
Overall, the experience is spectacular. Aside from the Sardine Run itself, South Africa’s Eastern Cape is wild and beautiful, with green cliffs towering over the sea, and you’ll catch views like the stunning Waterfall Bluff, one of only two waterfalls in Africa and only 19 worldwide that fall directly into the sea.
We’d say it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but there are those, such as Piers Narindara, who return year after year! For us, there are too many other trips on our Bucket List, and not enough time, so we’ll make do with the unforgettable memories of this spectacular experience.
GETTING THERE:
In order to get to the Sardine Run, you fly direct via Emirates to Durban, where you’ll spend the first two nights. Then it’s a long drive down to Port St John and back, so you should consider this when booking your return flight, as it should definitely be an evening departure.
The experience is full board, so all meals are covered, including drinks, snacks and sandwiches on the boat. You’ll only have to cover any after-dinner tipple, but don’t overindulge if you’re spending six to eight hours on a boat the next day!
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