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Beach day? Before you grab the towel and head for the ocean, one more thing: what’s happening in the water?
Enter Cape Town Beach Alerts, the City’s new 24/7 online guide to coastal water quality, beach conditions and everything else you need to know before hitting the coast.
The new platform puts the latest information for beaches and tidal pools along Cape Town’s Atlantic and False Bay coastlines in one easy-to-use place. A map, colour-coded pins and a search function make it easier to find your favourite swimming spot.
The colour coding keeps things simple:
- Green = the latest result is within national recreational guidelines.
- Amber = there’s been one failed result.
- Red = two consecutive failures.
Want the bigger picture? You can check the latest result or look at the rolling 365-day record.
The platform also shows when samples were taken, where they were collected, how many samples were analysed over the past year, and how many met recreational guidelines. You can scroll through the last eight results.
Then there’s the useful stuff beyond water quality.
Read: Blue Flag beaches in Cape Town
More accessible
Cape Town Beach Alerts includes active alerts, testing frequency, long-term beach classifications and information about lifeguard services and Blue Flag status. Today’s weather and a three-day forecast, wind direction and strength, round off the features.
“Cape Town Beach Alerts makes complicated data about coastal water quality accessible to the public,” said Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, Alderman Eddie Andrews.
“We want the Cape Town Beach Alerts webpage to become the go-to source for Capetonians and visitors for all beach-related information.”
Read: The 14 best tidal pools in Cape Town
In the planning
Alderman Andrews added that future phases could add information about dog-walking areas, coastal upgrades and marine-life sightings.
Users can register on the City of Cape Town app for push notifications about environmental and pollution alerts. View it as your heads-up, from a puffer-fish washout and a beached whale to a rabid seal.
Behind all those handy colour-coded pins is some serious legwork. A dedicated City team travels the city’s 300-plus-kilometre coastline every week, collecting water samples at more than 100 locations.
The samples are tested for enterococci, an internationally recognised indicator of coastal water quality and associated human-health risk. A SANAS-accredited laboratory specialising in microbiological analysis of seawater analyses them.
So, before you cannonball into the Atlantic, take 30 seconds to check the latest. Save the link. Check the colour. Then hit the beach.
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