Spotter flag status, sighting history and water conditions for the Cape Peninsula, Overberg, Garden Route and KZN coastline.
Active alerts: Fish Hoek, The Caves, Kogel Bay. Stay out of the water where a siren has sounded.
Beaches monitored
8
Pick your beaches below and set swell, wind and tide thresholds — you'll get an alert here (and a pop-up) whenever a spot lines up.
False Bay
Poor spotting conditions. A shark could be present and unseen. Surf school beach. Sand-stirred water after the southeaster.
poor
18 °C
6 days ago
11.4 km
—
Conditions unavailable
High —
Low —
Wind
—
Rain
—
Humidity
—
Air vs sea
— / 18 °C
Forecast weather from Open-Meteo, updated roughly every 15 minutes.
Scoring the next 12 hours of swell, wind and tide.
Swell
—
Swell direction
—
Wind
—
Gusts
—
sea 18 °C
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
—
Swell and wind from Open-Meteo Marine. Tide is a modelled semidiurnal curve — check SAN Hydrographic Office tables before relying on it.
Open the beach list above and pick a beach. Each entry shows the flag currently reported for that beach — green (spotting conditions good, no shark seen), black (poor spotting conditions), red (high shark alert), white (shark sighted, water cleared) or closed. Flags published by a verified lifeguard or shark spotter are marked as official; the rest are estimated from our risk model.
Green means spotters have good visibility and no shark has been seen. Black means spotting conditions are poor, so a shark could go unseen. Red means a high shark alert is in force. White with a shark symbol means a shark has been sighted and the water should be cleared. Closed means the beach is shut to swimmers.
Every beach page includes wave height, swell period and direction, wind speed and direction, sea temperature and a session rating that explains which factor — swell size, period, wind, direction or tide stage — is driving the score.
Each beach shows a tide chart with the next high and low tides, the current tide stage and a best-window timeline highlighting the next 6 to 12 hours when surf and tide conditions line up.
No. Google Earth and Google Maps imagery is typically months old, and no commercial satellite resolves an animal beneath the water surface. Reliable shark detection comes from human spotters on high ground, drones, acoustic tagging and shark nets. This site uses those human-reported flags plus a heuristic risk index.
Muizenberg, Fish Hoek, St James / Kalk Bay, The Caves, Kogel Bay, Noordhoek, Robberg Beach, Plettenberg Bay, Gansbaai / Kleinbaai, uMhlanga Rocks — spanning False Bay, the Atlantic Seaboard, the Overberg, the Garden Route and KwaZulu-Natal.
Not a safety guarantee. Satellite imagery cannot detect sharks — Google Earth and Maps imagery is months old and no commercial satellite resolves an animal beneath the surface. Detection comes from human spotters, drones, acoustic tags and nets. The risk index here is a heuristic built from spotting conditions, water temperature, recent sightings and seal-colony proximity, and currently runs on demo data. Always follow the on-beach flag and siren, and the instructions of Shark Spotters and lifeguards.
