I jump into the cold water, wiping bubbles from the camera lens, checking and setting the white balance and locking the focus all while I am finning toward and checking the scene exploding in front of me. I am trying to work out where to start. In front of me I can see an immense ball of fish, numbers impossible to count, and the only words that can describe their state are "sheer panic," for they are being harried and hunted from every possible direction. I begin to roll the camera at this living ball of fish, for that's what it is, a "sardine bait ball."

We have been searching for this natural phenomenon for four weeks. We have only seen tantalizing glimpses of them up until now, but today is D day. Having said that, we have already been spoiled by snorkeling with humpback whales, inshore and offshore bottle-nosed dolphins, common dolphins and pan-tropical spotted dolphins, as well as diving with the occasional copper, dusky and ragged tooth sharks. All this, though, has just been eclipsed.

We have traveled much farther south to meet the sardines this year. They have failed to travel north up the Kwazulu-Natal coastline, as they normally do at this time of year, to where we have been waiting for them, searching for them and dreaming of them. Now we have found them, and more importantly, so have the thousands of common dolphins, cape gannets, dusky and copper sharks as well as the cape fur seals.

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