The Sardine Run Experience  26 May - 2 June 2012

The Sardine run in South Africa is one of the world’s top wildlife spectacles and is on par with events like the Serengeti Wildebeest Migration. Each year during May, June and July, vast shoals of sardines leave their normal cold-water home in South Africa’s temperate seas and travel northwards into the sub-tropical seas of South Africa’s Wild Coast. Following the shoals is a caravan of predators, seabirds, sharks, game fish and marine mammals with little else but sardines on their mind. Tens of thousands of common dolphins charge after the shoals, separating them into densely packed bait balls. Easy pickings not only for them but also for schools of hundreds of bronze whaler, dusky and blacktip sharks, which attack the bait ball from below. The aerial assault on the sardines begins when tens of thousands of cape gannets begin their spectacular plunge diving display.

Chris & I were fortunate enough to be hosted by friends for 4 days on The Sardine Run in 2010. In that time we got to dive on one bait ball for about 40 minutes. It was so spectacular being “part” of a bait ball that we were utterly convinced that we needed to put a trip together in 2011.

The Sardine Run takes place most years along the east coast of South Africa. Although the sardines do not migrate they do follow the a band of colder water, below 20°C,which forms between the coastline and the warm Agulhas current of the Indian Ocean.