© Alison Towner, Dyer Island Conservation Trust/Marine Dynamics After hearing the news of a 5m female white shark at Marine Dynamics shark cage diving vessel in the Kleinbaai area, I grabbed the tagging kit and we set out to sea to take over the anchor position on the Dyer Island Conservation Trust’s research boat. While preparing the acoustic tag I looked [...]
The Dyer Island Conservation Trust, in partnership with Marine Dynamics, is proud, and excited, to be hosting the 2021 6th Southern African Shark & Ray Symposium from 17-19 November. The theme of the symposium for 2021 is “Catalyst for Change: Post-pandemic research on Southern African Chondrichthyans.” As we emerge from the pandemic the 6th SASRS will offer the chance for the [...]
On Friday the Dyer Island Conservation Trust received a call of a whale stranding in Pearly Beach. They quickly dispatched marine biologist Ralph Watson with two interns from the Marine Dynamics Academy to investigate the deceased animal. Once on site they joined African Penguin and Seabird Sanctuary’s Senior Bird Rehabilitator Xolani Lawo who was already on site. While in contact with the Whale [...]
The Dyer Island Conservation Trust in Gansbaai is grateful to receive a grant through the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) of R757 000 (Seven hundred and fifty seven thousand rand). “The Dyer Island Conservation Trust (DICT) extends our deepest gratitude to the National Lotteries Commission for awarding the Trust a grant for 2021. In these challenging times when many of our financial models [...]
The National Water Week campaign is aimed at raising awareness around the need to protect and conserve the country's water resources and our collective responsibility towards water conservation initiatives. The campaign is celebrated from 15 to 22 March, against the backdrop of the World Water Day on 22 March. The theme for 2021 is “Valuing water” and aims to understand how people value water whether it is [...]
The Dyer Island Conservation Trust’s Environmental Education Programme, known as DEEP, has been running in partnership with Masakhane Primary School for the past five years. Every year we accept 13 learners from Grade 5 who sign up to be committed to the programme for three years until Grade 7, so at this point the Trust runs three different groups throughout each [...]
~ This is a joint blog post between SeaSearch and the Dyer Island Conservation Trust With less than 500 individuals estimated to be left in South Africa, team members from The SWORD Project (Signature Whistle Occurrence, Recapture and Density) of SeaSearch visited Kleinbaai to work with the Dyer Island Conservation Trust (DICT) to test new acoustic equipment and record humpback dolphin [...]
It is our birthday, like all six year olds we would be delighted to receive some gifts. Waddle back through time with us to understand why every penguin counts Don’t follow your dreams, chase them The project started on the pages of the little black notebook bearing the dreams of Wilfred Chivell, the founder of the Dyer Island Conservation Trust. It [...]
- Alison Towner, Marine Biologist, PhD Candidate The Dyer Island Conservation Trust in Gansbaai is thrilled to announce the successful deployment of an acoustic transmitter onto one of Gansbaai’s most iconic white sharks. The newly re-named “not so Mini” Nemo arrived back in the area on 13 February 2021 and has been catalogued by the crew of Marine Dynamics for the [...]
~ Ralph Watson, Marine Biologist, Marine Dynamics/Dyer Island Conservation Trust On the 28th of January, the Dyer Island Conservation Trust (DICT) received a report of a whale stranding near Pearly Beach. Dickie Chivell and Ralph Watson were sent out to investigate and arriving on-site it became clear this was no ordinary stranding. The whale was a long-finned Pilot whale (Globicephala melas) , [...]
