Great African Seaforest

The Great African Seaforest is a dense underwater forest of sea bamboo (Ecklonia maxima) and split-fan kelp that fringes the Cape Peninsula and, according to the Sea Change Project, extends more than 1,000 km up the coast toward Namibia. Guided snorkel and dive sites in False Bay near Simon's Town — among them Windmill Beach and Millers Point — sit within a Marine Protected Area and teem with shysharks, Cape fur seals and thousands of marine species, many of them found only in South Africa.

The water is cold, typically 13 to 18°C, so wetsuits are worn year-round. The forest gained global fame as the setting of the Oscar-winning 2020 documentary My Octopus Teacher, and its conservators describe it as one of the planet's most unusual and biodiverse kelp ecosystems.