Photographing the Sardine Run in South Africa Changed My Life

Aug 16, 2025

Sarah Teng

For as long as I can remember, I’ve chased moments that remind me how small I am; the moments that make the world feel big again. The sardine run is one of those moments — a crazy spectacle of survival, chaos, and connection all at once. I went all the way to South Africa to see it with my own eyes and to feel what it means to be a part of something this wild.

What Is The Greatest Shoal In The World?

Every year between May and July, cold water currents push huge shoals of sardines northwards, bringing with them hordes of dolphins, sharks, whales, and seabirds. The Sardine Run is often called the greatest shoal in the world because of its sheer scale and ecological impact. Nowhere else in the world do this many fish move together in such a vast, visible, and predator-filled migration.

A large school of fish swims together in a tight formation underwater, with a dolphin approaching from the right side against a backdrop of blue ocean. Sunlight filters through the surface above.

A large school of fish swims closely together underwater, forming a dense, swirling mass with silver bodies reflecting light in the blue ocean.

The run encompasses millions of sardines forming huge bait balls to create this chaotic feeding frenzy, with predators attacking from all sides. It’s one of nature’s most extraordinary phenomena, and for anyone in the dive community, it’s a huge bucket list experience.

The natural behaviors are incredible. Common dolphins will blow bubbles to herd the sardines from down below up to the surface to form a tight bait ball. Dolphins will start feeding on the bait ball, and the kinetic energy will attract Dusky sharks and Bronze Whaler sharks to join in on the action, attacking the bait ball from below. From above the surface, diving Cape gannets will shoot down into the water to collect their own fish. And if you’re lucky, a Bryde’s whale will come charging through and swallow the entire bait ball, and then the cycle begins again.

For some reason, this year, all of the bait balls we saw were actually Atlantic Mackerel rather than sardines. We don’t know why this was the case, but considering it was a rare occurrence, we still had a great time. I loved being able to shoot mackerel as they’re much larger than sardines, and they have intricate designs on their body which make for super interesting photos.

A large school of fish swimming closely together underwater, captured in black and white. The fish are densely packed, moving in the same direction, with light filtering through the water above.

A dense school of silver fish swims closely together underwater, their bodies angled in the same direction and reflecting light, creating a dynamic, textured pattern.

For that reason, though, we mostly only saw sharks and dolphins feeding on the bait ball. I was really excited to see and photograph the diving Cape gannets feeding on a bait ball, but since mackerel are much larger and difficult for the Cape gannets to eat compared to sardines, we didn’t see many while we were in the water.

Photographing the Sardine Run

The wild coast is not for the weak. One thing I didn’t anticipate was how rough the conditions could be, and how difficult that would make shooting underwater. Some days it rained constantly, while others were nice and sunny, but with huge swells and white caps. Most of the passengers on the boat got seasick on multiple occasions.

When you’re in the water, not only do you have to deal with strong waves and currents pushing against you, but you have to be locked into what’s happening beneath the surface the entire time, constantly adjusting your camera settings when the lighting changes, and also not forgetting to breathe. If you were already seasick on the boat, being in the water when it’s that rough doesn’t help much.

When it comes to any underwater photography expedition, the priority is always to find the wildlife itself. Once you have that figured out, the next most important factor is visibility.

One of my favorite dives from the run was when we were able to scuba dive on a huge static bait ball. It was by far the biggest bait ball of the entire week, but visibility was so bad that it became spooky and somewhat dangerous to dive. Dolphins and sharks would appear out of nowhere, shooting through the bait ball right at you. It still made for some pretty cool shots after proper editing, but I can only imagine what these could’ve been in clear water.

A scuba diver underwater observes a massive swirling school of fish, creating a dramatic scene of marine life and human interaction beneath the ocean’s surface.

A pod of dolphins swims underwater toward a large, dense school of fish. The image is in black and white and has a misty, ethereal appearance.

A lone shark swims beneath a massive, swirling school of fish in deep blue water, with the dense fish forming a dark, cloud-like shape above.

When shooting at the surface, I typically prefer free diving down a few meters to get eye-level or below the action, but there were some days this felt nearly impossible with the currents and everything already happening. I was so overwhelmed on the first day that many of my photos didn’t turn out. As a result, most of the pictures I took were on the third and fourth days, when we had more action and favorable conditions.

A group of dolphins swims underwater amid a large school of fish, surrounded by clear blue water, creating a dynamic scene of marine life in motion.

The Gear for the Job

The Sardine Run was my first underwater expedition since February 2024, and I’ve significantly upgraded my underwater photography rig since then.

For this trip, I used my Sony a7R V and 16-35mm f/2.8 GM II lens inside of a Marelux underwater housing. This was the first time I’ve used a Marelux housing, and I’ll be writing out a more in-depth review of it in a separate article later. Spoiler: I had a great experience with it!

A professional underwater camera housing with attached controls and dome port sits on a green tarp, with droplets of water on it and a braided strap; a person's red pants are visible in the background.

I also tried out a few of Lexar’s new memory cards and workflow gadgets during this trip. My Sony a7R V was equipped with two Lexar Professional Gold CFexpress 4.0 Type A cards at 1TB each, which I was incredibly thankful to have because I didn’t have to worry about my cards filling up. I was shooting RAW photos on high burst modes and could easily fill memory cards if I wasn’t equipped with enough storage.

After each day on the water, I used Lexar’s new CFexpress 4.0 Type A card reader and 4TB SSD to offload footage/photos, and I have truthfully never had a workflow this quick/smooth/easy before. I was offloading hundreds of gigabytes of data in minutes, literally! It helped save so much time so that I could go to bed early and wake up early the next morning.

In addition to my Sony camera, I typically like to mount an action camera to my housing so that I can simultaneously capture behind-the-scenes (BTS) video of whatever is happening. I recently acquired an Insta360 X5 and was super excited to use this as my BTS cam for all the reasons people tend to love 360 cameras (don’t have to worry about framing, can capture myself as well as the action I’m seeing, etc.), but I ended up learning a lot about why this wasn’t the best choice camera after all.

First of all, the Insta360 X5 is an incredible camera on land. That doesn’t mean it isn’t also a great camera underwater, but I found it to be extremely conditions-dependent, with many additional factors to consider when using the X5 as a dedicated underwater camera. Something weird happens with the video stitching when you bring the X5 underwater, which then means you have to use the invisible dive housing, which then increases the size of the camera overall and makes it clunky. If you don’t mount it correctly, stitching gets messed up. If you mount it correctly with an invisible selfie stick, you now have a foot-long pole sticking out of your rig, which doesn’t stay submerged underwater when you’re shooting at the surface.

I could write an entirely separate article about all of the things I learned when it comes to using a 360-degree camera underwater, but I’ll leave it at this for now: I’m currently in the market for a DJI Osmo Action 5, which I think works best as a dedicated underwater BTS camera, out of all the action cameras presently on the market.

Aside from these two primary cameras I used underwater, I also brought along a Panasonic Lumix S1 II for topside video shooting, a Leica Minilux 35mm film point-and-shoot, and a Kodak Pixpro WPZ2 just for fun (photos underwater from this actually turned out so well!).

A person in a wetsuit and snorkeling gear smiles while holding seaweed in the ocean, with rocky mountains and a cloudy sky visible in the background.

Underwater view of golden-brown kelp swaying in clear blue water, illuminated by sunlight streaming from above, creating a shimmering, peaceful scene.

How Does One Dive The Sardine Run?

When it comes to underwater expeditions, there are tons of tour and trip companies dedicated to organizing and hosting trips like this for small groups of participants. Being in the dive and underwater photography community myself, I’m lucky to have friends in the industry who host trips like this all the time, which is how I found the specific group I signed up with.

This particular trip was organized by ImmersivExpeditions, with Offshore Africa being their local operators based in Port St. Johns. I highly recommend this trip to anyone interested in an adventurous week immersed in underwater chaos. Full disclosure, though, underwater expeditions like this are not “vacations” in the traditional sense. Getting to the wild coast was an adventure in itself, with my personal journey lasting over 25 hours to get from New York to Port St. Johns in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

The sardine run is unpredictable, but your odds of finding bait balls are higher the earlier you go out on the water. We woke up at 5 AM every day to get ready and depart on the boat at 6:30 AM, and we often stayed out on the water until 3 to 4 PM. After showering and rinsing our gear, we’d usually embark on a short land excursion, like beach combing for treasure or visiting the picturesque airstrip overlooking Port St. Johns. Dinner at the lodge opens at 6 PM each evening, and we’d usually be in bed by 9 PM to wake up and do it all over again the next morning.

So, is photographing the sardine run the right experience for you? Well, it depends.

A large school of silver fish swimming closely together underwater, creating a dense, shimmering pattern against a blue ocean background.

We joked on the trip that it takes a special type of weird person to dive the sardine run, because it really is quite an intense and challenging experience, and yet it can also be the most magical and rewarding experience of your life.

A scuba diver takes a photograph underwater near a large swirling school of fish, with sunlight filtering through the water above.

A large school of fish swims tightly together in a ball formation underwater, surrounded by deep blue ocean and illuminated by sunlight from above.

The reality is, you could end up spending an entire week on the water and not see a single bait fish, or you could end up going on the water for a single day and see more action than a sardine run veteran who’s visited for the past three years. You really never know what you’re gonna get, but if you’re open to the chase and understand that its unpredictability is part of the magic, I think you’ll find that the sardine run is a uniquely special and worthwhile experience.