ON THE RUN

Off the eastern coast of South Africa, HEATHER RICHARDSON dives into a wildlife spectacle unlike any other.

- HEATHER RICHARDSON

“KAY, THEY’RE coming back—get in the water! Go! Go! Go!” our skipper, Walter Bernardis, shouted as I pulled on my fins, shoved a snorkel into my mouth, and slid off the Zodiac into the Indian Ocean. With my head underwater, I heard them before I saw them. Clicking and whistling sounds zipped through the sea, and suddenly they were everywhere—thousands of common dolphins diving beneath me, leaping high above me, their bubbles shimmying past me. I kicked as hard as I could to keep up, but just as quickly as they’d arrived, the dolphins left me breathless in their wake.

Like me, the dolphins were following the sardine run, an ecological phenomenon in which billions of the fish migrate up South Africa’s eastern coast each June and July. The annual journey—a sort of aquatic version of the famed Great Migration of wildebeests from the Serengeti to the Masai Mara—attracts great numbers of predators: common dolphins, sharks, Bryde’s whales, sailfish, manta rays, and seabirds, especially Cape gannets. Though the event has long drawn serious divers, it has not typically been on the radar of high-end travel outfitters. But this June, South Africa–based andBeyond aims to change that with the launch of a 10-night expedition centred on the sardine run, which will visit the country’s Wild Coast, as well as andBeyond’s Phinda Private Game Reserve, near the border with Mozambique.