Our next location was De Hoop, which is close to the Southern Coast of the country. It took a few hours to get there from Cape Town, but we stopped in a town called Hermanus on the way. It is considered to be one of the best places for land-based whale watching in the world, and as a result a lot of the town is whale-themed. Unfortunately we are here in the wrong season – the whales are down in Antarctica right now. It definitely would have been amazing to see whales while I was here, but this just means I’ll have to visit South Africa another time in the fall, so I can actually see them. The town itself was really nice and reminded me kind of like Cape Cod – lots of little shops and restaurants right by the water. We were able to walk around for a few hours and discovered this amazing café which sold crepes. The water itself was also really beautiful and I was glad to see the ocean again because it’s one of the things that I have missed.
The place that we stayed in De Hoop is usually used for an environmental education camp, I think. We were in large dorm rooms above a big meeting room, which was been converted into our classroom/eating area. We were also right by a lot of hiking trails, one of which leads to a big cave in the hills with a great view of the area. The area we were in is considered to be the fynbos, which in non-scientific language means that it has special soil and moisture characteristics. It is also one of the most diverse areas of the world in terms of plant species and has a high percentage of species that don’t grow anywhere else. I don’t know much about plants, so I can’t really say what makes these plants so different but most of are low to the ground and seem similar to plants that you might find on a mountain.
Our time in De Hoop was pretty busy in terms of work. We had two FFP’s, presentations on conservation and a history paper due. I wasn’t in either of these FFP groups, but still had to participate in the fieldwork. The first one was with a scientist from the University of Cape Town who led a project about tide pools. We were trying to determine if the size of the pool and the distance from the water had an effect of the oxygen levels and the species diversity. It was probably the FFP that I have enjoyed the most in terms of fieldwork because it consisted of going to the beach and exploring tide pools for a day. I was responsible for collecting sea urchins, sea cucumbers, whelks, winkles and crabs from the pools for a behavioral experiment based on the oxygen levels in water. Watching the animals and recording their movements wasn’t too interesting, but I really liked being right by the ocean. A huge pod of common dolphins swam by which was exciting because we have the same species at home. We also got a chance to swim once we were done, so I can now say that I have swum in the Indian Ocean.
The other FFP dealt with a type of insect called a leafhopper, which is nothing like a grasshopper. They are really small and thin, but have noses that are about the size of half their bodies. This project was done with a professor from the University of Stellenbosch, but it was really the master’s project of one of his students. This school is pretty close to where we are, so the professor brought his honors class (basically the last year of college, although they have a different system here) with him to work on the project with us. It was nice to be able to work with new people and here what they had to say about living in South Africa, although it definitely made the place more crowded for three days. That FFP project involved looking at leafhoppers, which are nothing like grasshoppers. They are very small insects with very long noses and are often found on a certain type of plant. The project dealt with figuring out if there was in preference for plant species, or if the type of camouflage could be considered crypsis (meaning that it just blends into their surroundings) or masquerade (meaning that it pretends to be part of the actual plant). The whole day basically involved walking around hitting grasses and trying to capture the leafhoppers. Later in the afternoon we had to spend about 2 hours observing the leafhoppers, which turned out to be extremely boring because they really don’t do too much.
We actually had a day off during our time in De Hoop so we spent a good portion of the day at a beach. The water was surprisingly warm and I was really impressed by the lack of seaweed. I also had the chance to try surfing because one of my professors is big into it and brought along a few surfboards. It was a lot of fun, and I’m hopefully going to try it out again during our time in Cape Town. We didn’t see any sharks, but the coast of South Africa has one of the highest densities of sharks in the world. In addition, we visited Cape Agulhus, which is the very Southern tip of Africa. Besides that, De Hoop was filled with a lot of work, so I’m glad to be done with in and move on to the fun of Cape Town.
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