Underwater Photo Location: Capetown

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There is interesting diving around Cape Town. The Atlantic side is cold, but features kelp beds, seals, penguins, whales (seasonally) and sharks (including relatively large numbers of great whites). The currents can be challenging, and visibility is not always the greatest. The further east you go, the more tropical it gets, with a fairly abrupt transition between cold water (currents originating in the Antarctic) and warm (currents flowing south down the African coast) just east of Cape Town. Big fish are the story pretty much everywhere, especially sharks.

Cape Town is gorgeous, cosmopolitan, surrounded by great vineyards, and relatively peaceful compared to the crime and general mayhem in Jo'burg and Durban. Durban is the other big city on the coast, and is in an Indian Ocean ecological zone. The political situation around Durban is dicey, however, and has not yet fully settled down after the transition to majority rule. The coast east of Cape Town is beautiful and there are a number of smaller cities and large towns where a diver could be happy. Most feature good small craft harbours, although, to the best of my knowledge, diving facilites are mostly restricted to larger centres. Others may have more detailed (and recent) information.
I dived with an outfit in Simonstown, just outside Cape Town.

We did the Rockeater a wreck at 35m we were buzzed by seals on the safety stop.
The water is cold 8-10C so a thick wetsuit or drysuit is needed.
A drive up to Platenburg bay is worth it the water warms up rapidly. You can also dive the shark cage in the aquarium and the kelp forest tank there as well.

Facts about Capetown