Garden Route Unearthed

Searching for the common octopus on a Moonlight Meander Tour

The Moonlight Meander Tour is a tour that Bryan and I have been keen to join and enjoy for ages, so when my brother and sister-in-law came to visit in the summer, it seemed like a great excuse to book us all on to the tour.

As it was peak season, they were extremely busy with most of the tours already being fully booked, but Judy (the guide who runs the tour) was extremely helpful and managed to squeeze us in. We were all very excited!

So, I guess you want to know what this tour is all about and why were we excited about it.

It is a Guided Tour of the marine life and biodiversity of the tidal pools found on Swartvlei Beach towards Gericke’s Point and along the coast of the Garden Route in general.

The tour lasts about 3-3.5 hours and is extremely informative and interesting.

The tours are run in the moonlight at Swartvlei Beach at low tide during a new and full moon. At low tide the rock pools are exposed and via torchlight, you get to explore the intertidal zones close to Gericke’s Point and have the opportunity to see a huge diversity of marine life.

A favourite sighting on these tours and what we were all desperately hoping to see is the common octopus.

On the evening of our tour, we met Judy and Mark (her son) at 7pm in the car park area of Swartvlei Beach in Sedgefield. They were running two group tours on this particular day and our Guide was Mark. There were about 12 guests in the group.

Incidentally, Swartvlei Beach is one of five beaches found in Sedgefield in the Garden Route, and according to Getaway Magazine, Swartvlei beach is the best beach in the Western Cape!

The beach stretches from the mouth of the Swartvlei river, to Gerrick’s Point. This point is known locally as the Sphinz (you can see why from this photo).

From the car park, Mark led us on to the beach to the ocean’s edge, where we immediately came across the shells in this video, leaving a network of trails in the sand.

Bryan and I have come across these shells on numerous walks during the day on the beaches of Sedgefield. They are always feeding off the jellyfish and blue bottles that have been washed up on the beach. Thanks to Mark, we now know that they are called “Plough Shells”.

We also learnt some amazing facts about the movement of the sand up the beach, the nesting of a resident pair of Oyster Catchers, some startling facts about the barnacles that live on the rocks, and we saw a multitude of different shellfish, crustaceans and critters in the sand, rocks and the rock pools, that we never even new existed, let alone knew what they were called.

Mark has a incredible amount of knowledge and as we made our way along the beach and amongst the rock pools, we were enchanted by all that we saw and astounded by the amount of life these rock pools teem with.

So, in summary, the Moonlight Meander Tour is absolutely brilliant and I would definitely recommend it to anyone visiting Sedgefield (or nearby) during a new or full moon phase. Just make sure you have good shoes for walking on the rocks and a head or hand held torch.

Oh, I nearly forget, yes, we were also extremely lucky to see several common octopus in the rock pools.

These creatures are fascinating. The way they move and feed and their ability to change colour to blend in with their surroundings is simply wonderful. We all felt very privileged to have seen so many of them.

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