MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

Bell Buoy Algoa Bay – Editors Pic

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This image is from the MyPE Editor’s Flickr Account – offering some topical daily images from a phone smarter than Alan, occasional images from a DSLR and scanned images of Port Elizabeth as he wanders around the Bay pretending to know a lot and sometimes succeeding in making a complete hash of it!

Bell Buoy Algoa Bay

awstratonpic
Image by awstraton

Image taken whilst on a diving expedition courtesy of Expert Tours from Port Elizabeth.

In 1797 Lt William McPherson Rice charted a submerged reef approximately 1½ nautical miles off shore, north of Cape Recife. He named it Dispatch Rock and noted that it lies only 3m below the surface at low tide. This rock was a peril to many a ship and in 1838 a lit marker buoy was anchored over the reef, but it was soon washed away. In 1843 another buoy was placed and an official notification was placed in then Government Gazette naming it Roman Rock.

Today an East Cardinal marker buoy warns ships to pass on the eastern side. At night a flashing light marks the location of the reef. There is of course a bell on this buoy to warn ships when fog rolls into Algoa Bay, hence the name Bell Buoy.

This reef is known as Roman Rocks due to the large number of red roman fish that are found here. The extensive reef is made up of gullies and pinnacles and is teeming with fish, soft corals, feather stars, starfish, sea fans and anemones.

This image is randomly selected from an ever growing repository of publicly available images taken in and around Port Elizabeth.

Many more Port Elizabeth images here.

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.