Take a Starlight Stroll
“It’s a nautilus,” chirps one of the youngsters, as our guide, Judy Dixon holds up a delicate shell for us to identify. “Well, not quite,” she replies. “It’s sometimes called a paper nautilus because of its paper-thin casing, but is actually the egg case of an argonaut, a pelagic octopus.” Judy delves into her treasure chest like a magician to produce another exhibit.
In the car park at Swartvlei Beach, at Sedgefield on the Garden Route, we watch enthralled as Judy, a retired biology teacher and marine fundi, gives us a short introductory briefing, and produces clues to the marine life we might expect to see on the evening’s Starlight Stroll along the beach to the rock pools at Gericke’s Point.
“My interest in the marine environment was fired when I was at Cape Town University,” Judy says, as we wait for the party to
