Our outdoor work continues in our project at Hawston Paddavlei, read more about it on this newsletter. Our schools are busy with final exams and we have stopped visiting them for this year.
In this issue:
- Stanford Mill Stream Clean-up
- Public Talk – Decoding Hermanus Climate
- Hawston Primary Eco Group
- Annual Walk with Fireflies
Stanford Mill Stream Cleanup
On the 16th of October Whale Coast Conservation did a clean-up at the Millstream with fifty-four Grade 4 learners from Die Bron Primary School.
This is our monthly clean-ups that we conduct at the Millstream with the help of the Die Bron Primary school learners. A total of 15 bags of litter were collected. The learners enjoyed the outdoor classroom session (and yummy cake and cool drink afterwards) and are taking responsibility for a clean environment.
Curtis Bailey’s Talk on Decoding Hermanus Climate
Curtis Bailey is a Hermanus local. He is a lecturer and academic at Stellenbosch University, in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. His research interests are broad, spanning spatial and statistical modelling of geographic, climatic, ecological, and social phenomena.
In his talk Curtis delved into the issue of climate variability in the Greater Hermanus region. Situated in South Africa’s winter rainfall zone, this region is facing growing challenges driven by both human activity and environmental factors. One of the key players in this climatic drama is the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)—a global climatic phenomenon with the power to influence climate and weather patterns across the globe, including our own winter rainfall.
El Niño phases tend to bring drier winters, while La Niña phases contribute to wetter conditions—a pattern that holds significant implications for Hermanus. With recent La Niña events linked to some of the wettest winters on record, and El Niño to drier ones, the stakes for effective environmental management in our area are high.
His study has highlighted the variability of weather in Hermanus due to the topography of the area. For example, Hawston weather is very different to that experienced in the CBD and on the furthest end of Voëlklip. Each suburb has a unique weather experience. Unfortunately, there is only one research grade weather monitoring station in greater Hermanus to document this properly.
The near-capacity audience included 20 learners from Hawston Secondary School. The learners and their teacher were most enthusiastic about the presentation.
Sheraine van Wyk, ever alive to educational opportunities, immediately arranged for Curtis to do a presentation at the school to the entire senior cohort of 150 learners in the Geography department. They are hoping to finance weather monitoring equipment at a station at the school that would be manned by the school’s Geography Department. This will allow the learners to be involved in data generation and be exposed to weather and climate research.
As the cherry on the top, Curtis is arranging a day visit to Stellenbosch University to introduce them to the work that they do there and to show them to how the monitoring equipment works and how to track the data.
This is a great outcome to an excellent talk.
Hawston Primary School Eco-Club
In early October the Paddavlei Eco-Group education program was held at Hawston Primary and as a result the school was inspired to start their own eco-club. The aim of the eco-club is to learn and teach others about the environment and the importance of looking after their own environment. The eco-club includes learners from grades 4 to 7. The club’s programme kicked off with a commitment to do clean-ups at the Paddavlei every Thursday afternoon. Ensuring a pollution-free environment is an excellent start to conserving nature
A group of 18 enthusiastic learners, two teachers, with WCC staff members and Chairperson of the Paddavlei Eco-Group did the first clean-up on Thursday the 24th of October. Lots of bags of litter were collected on that day.
Their hard work and enthusiasm was appropriately celebrated with cake and cool drinks. What a lovely day!.
Our Annual Walk with Fireflies
We were unsure whether we would have good sightings of the fireflies this year following the severe storm and floods of September last year. So a group of 20 firefly enthusiasts joined Anina and Sheraine to experience the magic. Anina kicked off the adventure with a description of the life cycle of fireflies, and why such shape-shifting of metamorphosis is advantageous to insects. We discussed why fireflies produce light and why they flash.
We were not disappointed. Promptly, on cue at 19h45, the first lights started to flicker among the bushes. We could entice one to land on a hand so that the group could see just how tiny our local species are and marvel at the light produced by such a small body. As we had suspected, the flood had influenced the distribution of the fireflies, probably through washing away of the topsoil where the larvae over-winter. This year the main sighting had shifted from the slopes of Kanonkop to the slopes of Lemoenkop.
As we had experienced before, the lights went out after about an hour – their little ATP batteries had run down.
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