Welcome
Welcome to our first newsletter of 2026. We start with a review of our activities in 2025 – a busy year by any measure, for us as an organization and a community, and for the biome we call home. Next, we take stock of what the fynbos offered us after last year’s fires, in a photo
essay by Tessa Oliver. Then we look at our iconic beach, and what washes up on it, and why. And we conclude with a review of one of the latest additions to our library – for a comprehensive view of what’s on offer for you to borrow, click here.
Matters Arising: NEAG AGM
The NEAG AGM was held in late February in the airy main space at the Art Point Gallery, and lubricated by some delicious fynbos tea from committee member Tim Ellis. The event was well-attended by NEAG members, representatives from partner organizations like ToadNuts, and local residents. Chair Glenn Ashton gave a brief summation of the year’s events and our financial status (which continues healthy), then introduced the guest speaker, marine biologist and white shark expert Massimo Casali. Massimo’s entertaining address, illustrated by his magnificent photos, introduced the declining white shark population in False Bay and the many challenges these magnificent animals face. In particular, he tackled the popular but largely fallacious idea that the sharks have all been eaten or chased away by the two resident orcas, Port and Starboard. The apex predator in any environment, it turns out, is always us.
Flowers after Flames
TESSA OLIVER
The fires of April 2025 were a dramatic and expensive event for many of the communities of the Southern Peninsula, and the organizations that serve them.
But what they weren’t was an unmitigated disaster for the natural world. In the lifecycle of fynbos, they came after a 10 year window, and as predicted they were followed by an effusion of species we seldom see except after events like these. Perhaps the most dramatic display was provided by the pink Watsonia Barbonica, which took over entire slopes in late 2025, and which illustrate perfectly the benefits of fire to this biome. While shrubs in the fynbos can take decades to mature, Watsonias germinate, grow, flower and set seed in the space of one or two years. These brief generations lead to rapid evolution: after fire as thousands of Watsonias flower, a mass pollination makes for a huge genetic mixing, and the generation of millions of seeds – evolution on steroids. Tessa Oliver took her camera up the mountain in the months that followed the fires to document the splendour.
2025 in Review
GLENN ASHTON
NEAG Exco Chairman Glenn Ashton looks back on 2025, a busy year for NEAG, and one which highlighted the successes which may be achieved by working quietly and often behind the scenes with our networks to preserve critical ecosystems or effect responsible, sustainable change in the Valley.
Our AGM in February 2025 was well attended with a lively and engaged audience, a comprehensive look at the past year’s activities, and an excellent presentation on the role of seaweeds – more correctly marine algae – on our surrounding coasts by Prof John Bolton from UCT.
Early in the year, we were fortunate to attract two new members to our executive committee, Nick Paul and Tim Ellis. They bring welcome and useful skills and new energy to our executive. We are always looking for new members who have a particular axe to grind or skill to share and we will support them in every way possible.
On a very sad note we were all devastated by the tragic loss of our friend and supporter, the renowned botanist Donovan Kirkwood. He has been instrumental in assisting our understanding of the Noordhoek Sanctuary near the Red Herring centre, through plant identification and also growing plants from seed taken from the site, particularly the more threatened species. He will be sorely missed by us all in NEAG, the local community and the global botanical fraternity. We share our deepest condolences with his family at their profound loss.
We continue to shepherd both the Sanctuary and the council-owned strip of land beneath Chapmans Peak Drive. The latter has been worked on for years by member Bill Liltved who has almost singlehandedly kept this critical biome free of aliens and simultaneously reduced the fire risk to the suburb. Ceinwein Smith has also been busy in this area by getting council on board for maintenance of the area both to reduce runoff from the road and remove large trees that are a fire risk. She also supervised a team from our colleagues at Project Noordhoeked doing some alien clearance in the area and who continue to work there. And as always a massive thanks to Karoline at Project Noordhoeked for the amazing work she does locally!
The fire that blew in from Tokai in Autumn had the community on its toes and again highlighted the need to keep our properties fire wise by reducing alien invasives, which burn hot and fast, unlike local fynbos. Several landowners along the mountainside have been lax in keeping properties free of alien invasive species which both put our collective properties at risk and place our unique biodiversity under pressure.
We will always have fires; fynbos is meant to burn every 10 to 15 years. Fynbos fires are far more manageable than those amongst pine, gums and other alien species. It is wonderful to see a number of property owners now looking to contract with the Table Mountain National Park to reduce their alien load while simultaneously contributing to biodiversity conservation. However certain landowners should hang their heads in shame at the extent of alien infestation they have allowed to become established on their properties in this global centre of biodiversity heritage, a recognised UNESCO site of great biological, botanical and scientific value.
We continue to work closely with the NRPA, who do sterling work engaging with landowners to keep properties alien free, as well as working on many other aspects of conservation through managing their planning oversight portfolio.
Many people were shocked to see ground break at the massive development alongside the road in Lake Michele. Fortunately both NEAG and the NRPA have long been involved in this development and our intervention has been key to the installation of tunnels both inside and outside the development to allow toads and other wildlife to migrate under the roads. The tunnels will be installed under the main road in the new year.
On that note, we are alarmed at the way in which many residents are building supposedly burglar proof fencing which inadvertently becomes wildlife proof fencing. We are so lucky to live in an area that has amazing wildlife, from birds to frogs, snakes, mongeese, caracal, genets, grysbok, tortoise, porcupines and so on. Our suburb forms an integral link between the Silvermine section of the TMNP and the Noordhoek wetlands, which in turn link to the Southern Section of the park.
By blocking all movement of wildlife we risk undermining the diversity of our area. We strongly appeal to all residents to put small openings at the bottom of fences, vibracrete and walls so that these creatures, who were here long before us, can continue to thrive in this amazing area we have also chosen to call home.
Our work is endless and often thankless but we are grateful for every single example of conservation in the area, for the contribution of our wonderful community and for being able to call this amazing corner of Cape Town home. You are all always welcome to join us in keeping this area what attracted you to it.
We look forward to working with everyone and everything in 2026
What the Tide Brings In
ROBERT ANDERSON & NICK PAUL
Many of us walk on Noordhoek Beach every week, and most of us wonder about some aspect of what we see there. Why so much kelp? Are bluebottles endemic to the Atlantic? How clean is the water? Where is all the plastic? Robert Anderson and Nick Paul take a closer look at what washes up, and why.
Viewed from Chapman’s Peak, Noordhoek Beach stretches out for its long four kilometre sweep around the bay to Slangkop, a pristine white crescent punctuated from this distance by the squat boiler of the Kakapo and the occasional group of horseriders, and some walkers and surfers.
But as you walk the sands yourself, you begin to realise that the beach is covered by the remnants of what the sea has brought in – fragile mussel shells and cuttlefish bones, faded plastic, crab skeletons, bleached driftwood, the crackle of dried kelp or the damp heaps that have just washed ashore in a big sea. Occasionally, the powerful odor of a seal or other marine mammal that lies decomposing somewhere upwind.
How much of this is just nature at work – an ecosystem in balance, designed by time and evolution? And how much indicates that beyond the breakers, systems are changing and breaking down through overfishing, pollution, and climate change?
Powerful Forces
Noordhoek Beach, in the wide-mouthed expanse of Chapman’s Bay, is exposed to a range of powerful forces that act together to shape and reshape this dynamic environment. The cold steady flow of the Benguela current as it dips toward the coast. The upwelling of nutrients as the roaring southeasters of summer blow the surface water out to sea. The storms that sweep up from the southern oceans in winter and curl back down on themselves to become northwesterly gales. The seasonal shifting of sand that reshapes the beach and foredunes, and the tidal lagoon – crystal clear and cold on a spring tide, stagnant or completely dry on a neap.
And then the more human forces – the small fishing boats offshore and the much larger fleets beyond the horizon. The sewage from a coastal city of 3 million people. The warming waters as climate change impacts the ocean. Plastic waste by the ton.
A Matter of Quality
The most plentiful commodity the sea brings is of course water. And the water that washes Noordhoek Beach is for the most part in relatively good condition. While plumes of barely-treated sewage have been recorded from the offshore fall pipes in Hout Bay and Greenpoint, and will occasionally approach neighbouring shorelines in the right conditions, Noordhoek is not under immediate threat from these facilities. And according to the annual Cape Town Know Your Coast report, water quality, measured at the Hoek and Kommetjie, has been consistently excellent since 2023. By contrast, Hout Bay has been consistently poor.
This has to do in part with the treatment of waste in the growing valley community. The Wildevoëlvlei Waste Water Treatment Works (WWTW) services Fish Hoek, Kommetjie, Noordhoek, Ocean View and Masiphumelele, has a maximum capacity of 14.5 megalitres per day; the treated effluent processed at the plant flows into the vlei, which drains into the ocean at Kommetjie. The plant is currently being upgraded to increase operating capacity, boost operational efficiency and improve effluent quality. A further upgrade will soon make water recycled from the effluent available for use in surrounding suburbs.
All of this has absolutely nothing to do with the pungent green-brown foam that storms bring ashore on Noordhoek Beach. While visitors often wonder whether it comes from detergents or industrial chemicals, it is in fact completely natural, originating from the decomposition of organic matter like kelp and phytoplankton, and contains lipids, protein, carbohydrates and other compounds. It nourishes bacteria that in turn feed filter-feeders and when high winds blow it onto the shore, the nitrogen and phosphorus it contains help to nourish coastal vegetation.
We get by with a little kelp…
No matter how much kelp there is on Noordhoek beach, it keeps coming, from an apparently endless offshore supply. Kelp forests cover about one-third of the world’s coastline, providing a three-dimensional habitat for thousands of marine species and playing a critical role in maintaining a stable climate. Kelp is one of the fastest-growing organisms on Earth, with some species able to grow up to 61 cm per day. South Africa’s kelp beds – the Great African Sea Forest – extend from Cape Agulhas around Cape Town and up the west coast as far as 1000 km into Namibian waters. The two dominant canopy-forming kelp plants in our waters are the sea bamboo Ecklonia maxima and the Split-fan kelp Laminaria pallida.
Like coral reefs, kelp forests are vulnerable to climate change. However, the Great African sea forest is one of only two of the world’s kelp biomes that are growing, and considered in good health; globally around 2% of kelp is lost every year. The only kelp beds close to Noordhoek are relatively small ones at Slangkop and below Chapman’s Peak. But kelp can travel from hundreds of kilometers away, in drifting rafts like those spotted by early Portuguese and Dutch sailors, the latter calling the Ecklonia “Zee trompetten”. In early Cape Town, fish sellers would announce their wares by blowing on “trumpets” made from kelp stalks.
So the kelp which washes up on Noordhoek beach – uprooted by storm swell, and carried by onshore winds – is not a sign of ill health or collapse. In fact, it is of major benefit to the ecosystem. As it decomposes, it attracts insects like the kelp fly Fucellia capensis and smaller organisms, which in turn become food for shore birds. The presence of kelp on Cape Town’s beaches also traps wind-blown sand, creating a ‘thicker’ beach, and building dunes that create a natural buffer against erosion, stop sand engulfing coastal properties and infrastructure, and protect them from storm surges.
While the Cape Town municipality removes kelp from certain beaches to improve their appeal to tourists, Noordhoek is happily not one of these. According to the City, beach-cast kelp is only removed from beaches that are considered highly altered environments (i.e. no longer considered as functional or productive ecosystems) and which are popular recreational destinations. Kelp is currently removed from approximately 1% of the total length of Cape Town’s coastline.
Completely spineless
Less welcome than the kelp – at least for swimmers – are bluebottles, species of Physalia which prefer the east coast where they come ashore in their millions during an onshore southeaster. Also known as the Indo-Pacific Man o’ War, the bluebottle is a siphonophore, a colony of tiny, specialized polyps working together, with some seeing to the propulsion, others to the capture and digestion of food – mainly larval fish and small crustaceans and molluscs – and others to reproduction. Another perhaps more iconic visitor is the compass jellyfish, from one of three species – the Benguela Compass (Chrysaora fulgida), the Purple Compass (Chrysaora Africana), and the Cape Compass (Chrysaora agulhensis).
What brings these invertebrates to the beach? Wind and currents, and in the case of the jellyfish, upwelling. The Benguela Current is fed by deep upwellings from the South Atlantic, carrying nutrients up from the ocean floor. Upwelling is driven largely by wind direction and is strongest when the wind direction is at right angles to the set of the current, leading to seasonal changes in nutrient availability, and therefore jellyfish numbers. Jellyfish feed on smaller zooplankton, whose numbers are determined largely by the amount of phytoplankton (single-celled algae) in the water column.
Shell game
If she did sell seashells, she wouldn’t get rich doing so in the Noordhoek carpark. The Beach is hardly a shellhunter’s paradise. There are few reefs off the coast, and this means shell diversity is limited. The most common species locally is mussels, which are abundant on the tidal rocks to the north and south, and are generally healthy, although they are subject to lots of sand movement that seasonally kills many by burial. Mussel shells are also relatively light compared to other rock-dwellers like limpets, so they wash ashore easily.
What’s that smell?
One of the hazards of Noordhoek beach is the poignant sight – and the pungent odour – of a Cape Fur seal that has washed up dead on the beach. There are many causes of seal mortality – common pathogens for example, or more worrying illnesses like rabies, which has entered the local population, perhaps as a result of interactions between seals and jackals or feral dogs up the West Coast. Seals might also be washed off Duiker Island off Hout Bay in a big swell and die of exhaustion while attempting to get to shore – this is particularly the case for baby seals.
In the summer months, it’s quite normal to see Cape fur seal pups on our beaches. Cape fur seals breed synchronously, meaning most pups are born around November/December. The yearlings from last season are now leaving the colony and fending for themselves for the first time; many young seals get washed onto beaches at this time of year, particularly if an unseasonably big swell hits. Some that strand alive are able to return to their colonies, but weaker individuals often don’t survive. Unfortunately, this seasonal increase in strandings is a natural part of their life cycle.
The City of Cape Town conducts regular beach patrols to remove carcasses, particularly on busier beaches. Noordhoek is not part of the regular removal route due to its remoteness and lower foot traffic, so carcasses are often left as part of the natural ecosystem. These carcasses do not pose an environmental risk, and the recommendation is for people and dogs to simply avoid them. This is particularly so because rabies has become endemic in the local seal population – although the likelihood of an animal contracting rabies from a corpse is relatively remote.
A handful of marine mammal strandings will also occur throughout the year. In the case of larger baleen whales, there is no way to return these animals to the sea. Depending on the circumstances, they may need to be humanely euthanised, or nature may be allowed to take its course’. These decisions are based on public safety, cost, and accessibility.
Some years ago, peaking in 2019, there was an increase in the stranding of Bryde’s whales, which showed signs of entanglement. Scientists recognised a spike in strandings with similar injuries and were able to identify the rope types responsible, linking them to the octopus fishery. In a win for conservation, the industry, scientists, and authorities collaborated to phase out the traps causing entanglements. An experimental fishery began trialling new “quick-release” bottom traps; since 2020, no new strandings caused by entanglements have been reported. This work also gave researchers the opportunity to tag Bryde’s whales and investigate their feeding patterns, leading to the discovery of previously unknown bottom-skimming behaviour – which helped explain their susceptibility to entanglement.
Other causes of strandings include natural navigation errors, old age and a wide variety of diseases. A few years ago, a domoic acid toxicity event caused by a natural, but unusual bloom of toxic algae resulted in a spike in mortality in Cape fur seals; monitoring this ultimately led to the detection of rabies in the population.
Live strandings of dolphins and whales are managed by the City of Cape Town and can be reported on 021 487 2343. You can also contact the SPCA (021 700 4158/4159) or Shark Spotters (078 174 4244), who will notify the appropriate authorities.
Fish
The west coast has a relatively low diversity of fish species, so interesting specimens seldom wash ashore here. A common find is the drying husk of the odd porcupine fish (often called pufferfish), one of several species of Diodon, slow swimmers that feed on bottom-dwelling invertebrates. Diodon is one of several fish the Japanese use to prepare fugu, carefully removing the skin and organs, which contain tetrodotoxin, a poison said to be 1000 times more lethal than potassium cyanide.
Some years ago, a sudden drop in offshore water temperature caused a rare washup of some trunkfish (Ranzania laevis), a peculiar, slow-swimming pelagic fish that feeds on planktonic crustaceans. And about a decade ago thousands of pilchards washed up at the Hoek when shoals were trapped inshore by an influx of icy water. Locals and otters reaped a good harvest!
Waste not
Something one does not see much of on the beach is plastic waste. This is due partially to the relative absence of major rivers emptying into the ocean around the Cape, but mainly to the efforts of Project Noordhoeked under the dedicated management of Karoline Hanks. The Project employs a team of four to clean the streets and green spaces of the suburb, and to clear the beach of plastic and non-recyclable waste.
There are certain types of waste that the Project Noordhoeked team sees a lot of – chip packets, polystyrene fragments from fast-food packaging, plastic shopping bags, lids from bottled water. Karoline Hanks believes that most of this waste is land-based, and the result of poor solid waste management. Some of it, says Karoline Hanks, probably comes down the Bokrams river in Kommetjie and the Disa and Baviaans in Hout Bay. The earbud sticks may be arriving via the Bokrams from the Wildevoelvlei treatment works – they are often disposed of down toilets, and could slip through the initial filtering phase. Some of the waste is typically maritime – large ropes, fishing gear. And some of it is the detritus one finds on any beach in the world: cigarette lighters, toothbrushes, flip flops, clothes. And of course microplastics, a global pandemic to which our beaches are decidedly not immune.
What’s of interest is where all of this goes: to recycling, or landfill, through the efforts of Project Noordhoeked, whose four employees comb the beach twice a week in summer, and more frequently in winter. They’re assisted in these efforts by the public, who take the bags provided and return with them full to feed Kakapo, the wire whale at the top of the boardwalk. And the organically curvy benches that overlook the beach are full of eco bricks made of plastic waste stuffed into two-litre bottles.
Noordhoek Beach, as regular visitors know, is a highly dynamic environment. The beach itself changes in width by as much as 150m seasonally, at its widest in late summer and its narrowest in late winter. Globally, sea levels have risen 11 cm since 1996: the beach is our valley’s first line of defence against sea level rise and a unique and valuable biome in its own right, created and maintained by the wind and the tides, threatened as the natural world falls out of balance.
A River Runs through Everything
ROBERT McFARLANE
Review: Is a River Alive by Robert McFarlane
WW Norton and Company, 2025.
Some books launch right into the main action on the cover. “Is a River Alive?” asks the title of the latest by eco-philosopher/adventurer Robert McFarlane, who spends the rest of a quite rollicking 300-odd pages asking the same question in a number of locations and from a number of angles, without ever fully answering it. Unless an indeterminate point somewhere between “of course” and “maybe” counts as an answer.
McFarlane, whose earlier works include The Old Ways (about ancient paths and routes) and Underworlds (about journeys underground), begins at a little-known and unassuming spring near his home in Cambridge. But very quickly he’s off to the cloud forest of the Los Cedros river in Ecuador, in the company of a cast of characters that includes crusading lawyers, a mushroom hunter who communicates with fungi, and musician Cosmo Sheldrake, who records them for his whimsical anthems. The river has recently obtained legal personhood – recognition that it is in fact a being with the same rights of protection before the law as a human person
Then McFarlane explores the devastated landscape of the rivers of Chennai in India, which have been so built over and polluted that one of them – the Ennore Creek – has literally been erased from the maps. But even here, McFarlane finds a threatened abundance of birdlife, and evidence that yes, a river – however damaged – is a system of at least comparable complexity to the human person, and in cases like this deserving and needful of the same rights.
He finishes in the vast riverine wilderness of Quebec, with a band of very intense fellow travellers who paddle their troubled way down the mighty Mutehekau Shipu, one of the last undammed rivers in a region where nature itself has been turned over to the generation of electricity for industry. And here he has a dramatic experience that for him – if not the reader – answers the question on the cover once and for all. The destination, it seems, is well worth the journey.
Throughout, the prose becomes poetic on every other line, and if he mentions someone by name, you will be well-rewarded by googling that person. And if any of this sounds heavy, no: it’s a page turner, with adventures and cliffhangers and lots of conversations you wish you’d been part of. One of which may be with the rivers themselves.
“I wrote this book with the rivers,” says McFarlane. “They co-authored it. That’s not a trick. I mean it. I wrote it with them, I could not have written it without them, they were fully participatory in the experience.”
McFarlane’s book comes at a time when the “legal personhood” of companies is enabling them to run roughshod over the natural world and the rights of the people they are meant to serve. But also at a time when nature – assisted around the world by dedicated lawyers and activists – is finding its own legal voice. Mount Tanaraki and the Whanganui River in New Zealand, the Atrato River in Colombia, and soon, perhaps, the continent of Antarctica, represented by Antarctica Alliance and its campaign for Antarctic Rights.
But we’re nowhere near critical mass. Rights of Nature might for some be a clever trick to add weight to our protection of the systems that protect us. Or it may be an acknowledgement of a deeper reality: that we don’t really know what life is, that perhaps we can’t know, but that we – the human and more than human world – will be well-served by assuming that life is everywhere, and that a river – and a mountain, a continent, and maybe one day a beach – is alive.
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