Spotting Sharks in South Africa & at Springbok – Know the Signs!

Do you ever check the flagpole at Muizenberg before you walk into the water? Most of us don't, and that's unfortunate, because some poor oke up on that mountain spends his whole day with eyes fixed on the water to keep you safe. He isn't watching for a fin either, seeing as a dorsal fin almost never breaks the surface. Instead, he checks for a shadow that doesn't quite look like a seal, which takes more skill than you realise…

Down on the sand, a second spotter has a walkie-talkie in hand, and between the two of them they turn the most nerve-wracking question concerning Mzansi oceans into four coloured flags. Green, red, black or white, and each colour means something different for the water you're about to walk into. Taking the warnings into account before we commit is second nature to us, and the same goes for the online casino games South Africa that can open in any browser.

Here at Springbok Casino we've got two slots with a great white on the reels, which is the one place you will ever hope one pitches up. One pays small amounts often. On the other, you can sit through fifty spins with nothing. One word differentiates that result, and you'll find it on the game tile before you even launch the game. Tap the tile on any of the online casino games South Africa opens and there it is… but we’ll get back to that!

Eyes on the Water – How Shark Spotters Began at Surfers Corner in 2004

Why does the Shark Spotters programme exist at all? Well, Bokke, because of one very bad year. In 2004, a spate of shark bites along False Bay, with sightings at the busiest beaches in the country, left whole communities with two options: give up the water entirely, or find a way to see a shark coming. In true Mzansi fashion, the community rallied together with no government assistance, driven by the surfers who used that beach themselves.

What happened next was pure Ubuntu, because big wave surfer Greg Bertish, along with Dave and Fiona Chudleigh of Surf Shack, asked the lifeguards and car guards already working that beachfront to climb the mountain and watch the water for shadows. Not one of them had a budget or a mandate to work with, and it worked anyway! Over in Fish Hoek the trek net fishermen and the lifesaving club had landed on exactly the same idea at the same time.

By 2005 Bertish and Alan Wellburn had registered Shark Spotters as a Public Benefit Organisation, employed permanent staff and put the first shark siren and flag system up on the sand. Twenty-odd years on, spotters watch eight Cape Town beaches with over 2,020 sightings logged since 2004, and five more beaches in Plett are covered too. You can thank a few car guards and a pair of binoculars for that one!

Watch Out! What the Shark Spotter Flags at Muizenberg Represent

Four flags fly on every Shark Spotters beach, and you want to know all four before you get anywhere near the water. Get it wrong and you're either swimming while a great white cruises past, or sitting on your towel gatvol while everyone else is out there. There's a fifth signal on that pole too, and it's the only one that means the water is not being watched at all, so do check all the way to the bottom of this list, mense! It’s actually important info…

• Green flag – spotting conditions are good, which means the spotters can see what is in the water today.
• Red flag – a high shark alert is in force, so treat the water as unsafe until that flag comes down.
• Black flag – spotting conditions are poor, so the spotters can neither confirm nor rule out a shark.
• White flag with a black shark – a shark has been seen, the siren sounds, and everybody leaves the water immediately.
• No flag on the pole – no spotter is on duty, so nothing whatsoever is being watched on your behalf.

Here's the part we respect most, and you don't see it often: they tell you outright where the system falls short. Glare, water clarity, cloud shadow, mist and wind all reduce what a spotter can see, and Shark Spotters states in writing that it cannot guarantee anybody's safety. Have you ever seen a service advertise its own weak points that openly? Neither have we, and we're in the business of publishing terms.

Q: What does it mean when no flag is flying at the beach?

A: An empty flagpole means no spotter is on duty, so nothing is watched on your behalf that day. Pasop, because the four colours only mean anything while somebody is up on that mountain with binoculars, which makes the bare pole the signal most visitors miss. Ask the spotter on the sand if you're unsure about the day's conditions, because that is exactly what he is standing there for.

Slot Volatility… The Bite Behind the Swings, Hit Frequency & Your Bankroll

Those flags describe the water before a swimmer commits, and a slot's volatility rating is the same kind of description for your bankroll. Tap any tile among the online casino games South Africa offers in our Springbok Casino lobby and up comes a pop-up with the theme and the volatility, rated low, medium or high on every title. One word, displayed right there before you spend a cent, and most of us tap straight past it without considering its consequence.

The thing is, we have all grown slightly immune to ratings here, seeing as we get one on everything from petrol to politicians. This one counts, though, so bear with us. Low volatility means smaller wins that come around often. High volatility means the cold stretches run longer, but the figure at the end of them is considerably bigger. Scuba Fishing is rated low and Lucky Catch high, which is why we're covering the two together.

Put it into rand and it stops being theory. At R1 a spin, a R50 balance funds fifty spins on either kind of game, yet those fifty spins feel nothing alike. On a low volatility title, you'll collect small returns along the way. On a high volatility one, forty of those spins can be duds before a feature finally triggers a mega payout, which is not the fault of the online casino games South Africa rates that way. You had that from the rating before you spent a cent.

Q: Does a high volatility slot pay more than a low volatility one?

A: Not necessarily, since volatility describes distribution rather than generosity. A high volatility slot pays less often and larger, a low volatility slot pays more often and smaller, and the rating alone is no guide to what either of the online casino games South Africa plays returns across thousands of spins. Match it to your bankroll and to how long you're prepared to wait.

Scuba Fishing at Springbok Casino – Our Gentle Drift with a Shark

Scuba Fishing is the calmer of our two shark slots, and it looks the part. A diver hangs in clear blue water on the left, a treasure chest glints among the coral on the right, and the reels are three across and three deep. It is rated low volatility in the lobby pop-up, which is your green flag among the online casino games South Africa can open in rand. There's no jackpot attached either, so the paytable presents the full list of what you can win.

How the Three Reels & 27 Ways Pay Out

There are no paylines to count here, which puts this Springbok title apart from most of the online casino games South Africa plays. Matching symbols pay whenever they turn up on adjacent reels from left to right, which comes to 27 ways to win on every spin. Your combinations get multiplied by the paytable prize, then by the all ways pays bet, a twentieth of your total bet. There are no lines to buy and nothing to switch on, because every spin covers all 27.

The paytable is ranked the way a catch is ranked on the Cape coast, with the marlin at the top and the anemone right at the bottom, where an anemone belongs. Every figure below is a multiple of the all ways pays bet, so treat them as multipliers and not as rand. That keeps the sums consistent from twenty cents a spin up to a hundred rand. Land three of a kind on adjacent reels and here's what comes back:

• Marlin pays 200, the biggest single award among the reef symbols on the board.
• Yellowfin tuna pays 80, second only to the marlin on the paytable.
• The pufferfish pays 30, while the red and green reef fish pay 20 apiece.
• Shells and urchins pay 12, and the anemones at the foot of the table pay 8.
• Only the highest win per combination is paid, so two results never stack, as on most online casino games South Africa plays.

The Shark Wild & the Respin Feature

The great white is the substitute symbol, standing in for everything else on those three reels. The shark itself has no payout of its own. Stack three of them on the middle reel, Bokke, and the respin feature triggers, which is where this modest little game stops being modest! The wild stays expanded across the middle, one of the nine symbols gets picked at random, and reels one and three refill with only that symbol and blank stops.

Whatever that symbol pays is what your respin pays, so a marlin turning up there is the one you're praying for on any of the online casino games South Africa offers. The feature can't be retriggered, and the ceiling on any paid spin is 540 times your total bet at Springbok. We took it for a practice run and, yoh, we saw substantial returns off a very modest stake. Don't take our word for it though... The R1,000 practice balance covers a good many spins at that stake!

Scuba Fishing in Numbers

• Reels and ways: three reels, three rows and 27 ways to win, with no adjustable lines to worry about.
• Bet range: from R0.20 up to R100 a spin, in rand like every one of the online casino games South Africa opens at Springbok Casino.
• Volatility and top award: rated low, with a ceiling of 540 times the total bet on a paid spin.
• Wild and feature: the shark substitutes for every symbol on the online casino game South Africa knows as Scuba Fishing, triggering the respin on three.
• Scatter and free games: there is no scatter symbol and no free games round in this particular title.
• Platform: instant play and mobile, like all the online casino games South Africa opens at Springbok.

Q: How much can I bet on Scuba Fishing at Springbok Casino?

A: Bets on Scuba Fishing start at R0.20 and run up to R100 a spin at Springbok Casino, which covers a slow session on the smallest stake and a serious one at the top end. Because the game is rated low volatility, modest bets tend to stretch further here than on the high volatility online casino games South Africa offers. Start at twenty cents while you learn the respin, then climb if it suits you.

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Lucky Catch at Springbok Casino – Our Deep Plunge into Rougher Water

Lucky Catch is the other end of the Springbok water spectrum entirely, and you'll spot that well before you spin – if you pay attention. The reef is drawn in cartoon neon, the great white grins at you from the middle of the board, and this one is rated high volatility in the lobby pop-up. It offers five reels, three rows and 25 paylines you cannot adjust. That said, you can tweak your bet size across those paylines with excellent flexibility.

How the 25 Fixed Paylines Pay Out

As we've said, the 25 lines are fixed, and your total bet is the bet per line across all 25 – with values from R0.25 up to R125 per spin. A win needs its symbols unbroken from the leftmost reel inward, and where two of them overlap on one line, we pay the bigger and not both. Your line wins are worked out per line, while a scatter win is worked out on your whole stake, as is commonplace on the online casino games South Africa calls slots!

Then there's the number that sells this game: 20,000 times whatever you have staked on a single line – the steepest ceiling among the online casino games South Africa offers in rand. Reach it, and every feature shuts down on the spot, which happens about as often as you would expect for a figure that size! Getting there is another matter, and we'll come back to that number, because it isn't quite what it looks like…

Free Games, Bursting Wilds & the Random Prize Award

The scatter is the Lucky Catch logo itself, and it's the symbol you want three of. It pays from anywhere on the board rather than along a line, which is typical of online casino games South Africa in this genre, and the Bursting Wild won't substitute for it. Land enough of them – at least three, to be precise – and everything changes, which is the round the whole game is built around. Here's what each combination pays you in free games:

• Three scatters anywhere on the board trigger 10 free games, staked at whatever you spun to get them.
• Four scatters trigger 15 free games, again at that same stake.
• Five scatters trigger the full 20 free games, which is the best start the round offers.
• Three or more scatters during the round retrigger the whole sequence from the top.
• A Random Prize Award pays a multiple of the bet per line on any base game spin.

The shark is the wild again, and the Bursting Wild is the version that does the paying. It turns up on any reel during a base game spin and turns other symbols on the board into wilds, with the winnings worked out once every reel has stopped. We sommer ran it in practice mode too, and the free games round produced returns well above our stake. That's all we're saying about it, china, so go and see for yourself!

Lucky Catch in Numbers

• Reels and paylines: five reels, three rows and 25 fixed paylines you cannot adjust.
• Bet range: from R0.25 up to R125 a spin, in rand like every one of the online casino games South Africa opens at Springbok Casino.
• Volatility and top award: rated high on the online casino games South Africa opens, with a ceiling of 20,000 times the bet per line.
• Wild and feature: the shark substitutes for all symbols bar the scatter, alongside the Bursting Wilds.
• Scatter and free games: the logo scatters pay 10, 15 or 20 free games, and they retrigger.
• Platform: instant play and mobile, like all the online casino games South Africa opens at Springbok Casino.

Q: How many free games can I trigger in Lucky Catch?

A: Three scatters trigger 10 free games at Springbok Casino, four scatters trigger 15 and five trigger 20, all with added Bursting Wilds. Your free games are staked at whatever you spun to trigger them, and three or more scatters during the round retrigger it, so a good run continues well past the original allocation, which few of the online casino games South Africa offers allow.

Pick Your Shark! Scuba Fishing vs Lucky Catch & Your Bankroll

Side by side, then, each game has a great white as the wild, each is a SpinLogic title, and both are online casino games South Africa can open in a browser on a desktop or a phone. Beyond that they have almost nothing in common, and which one belongs on your phone comes down to your balance and your nerves. The table below sets the two of them out, row by row, so you can see exactly where the two of them split.

Now, look hard at that bottom row, mense, because those two figures are not measured the same way. Scuba Fishing's 540 is worked out against your total bet, so a R2 spin caps at R1,080. Lucky Catch's 20,000 is worked out against the bet per line, and across 25 lines your line bet is a twenty-fifth of your stake. Same shark, two completely different sums, so check the units before you weigh up the number on any of the online casino games South Africa lists.

Do the sums and watch it shrink... At R2 a spin, Lucky Catch tops out around R1,600 against Scuba Fishing's R1,080, which is nowhere near the 540 against 20,000 those raw figures suggest. Yes, that's the house pointing out that our own headline number is smaller than it looks, and no, we haven't lost the plot. Lucky Catch still pays more at the top of the two, at R1,600 against R1,080, just not thirty-seven times more…

Which shark do you pick, then? If your balance is skraal, and we mos all know that feeling, Scuba Fishing at R0.20 a spin is your game. If you're chasing that free games round and can absorb a cold stretch to reach it, Lucky Catch is your water. What do we suggest, then? Try both while the money is still ours, like the rest of the online casino games South Africa opens at Springbok, which brings us neatly to the next bit.

Q: Which of the two shark slots is better for a small bankroll?

A: Scuba Fishing suits a smaller bankroll better, on two counts. Its minimum bet of R0.20 is lower than R0.25 on Lucky Catch, and the low volatility rating means returns come around more often, so you get more spins out of the same balance than you would on the high volatility online casino games South Africa lists. Start there, then go looking for that free games round once you have the feel of it.

Test the Water Free – Practice Mode & the R250 No Deposit Coupon

Before either shark costs you a cent, there's practice mode, and every account here at Springbok Casino comes with a R1,000 fun-money allocation to spend on it. Both of these slots are open to it, which is exactly how we got the figures above. Is there a catch? Yep, there is… That allocation is a once-off, so once it is spent, it's done. Spend it on either shark before you put down a cent of your own.

Now listen out, okes, because this is the exact order we'd do it in ourselves, and the first two steps don't touch a cent of your own money. The whole run takes about ten minutes on any of the online casino games South Africa opens, and step five is the first one where you spend from your own bankroll. By the end, you'll know which of the two sharks suits you, and all of it before a single rand of yours is on the line. Here it is:

1. Open Scuba Fishing in practice mode and study the pop-up before you touch the spin button.
2. Do the same on Lucky Catch, so you've felt both rhythms while the money is still ours.
3. Register an account and redeem TEST-SPRINGBOK in the Springbok cashier for your R250 no deposit coupon.
4. Spend that free bonus on slots, because roulette and table games earn nothing toward the playthrough.
5. Deposit from R25 on Lightning Bitcoin at Springbok Casino when you're ready to play for real rand.

Wagering on the coupon is 60x, which comes to R15,000 of playthrough on the bonus, and the most you can cash out from it is R1,250. The code goes into the Redeem Coupon section of the cashier, once per account, and it works on the online casino games South Africa calls slots. Our two Springbok sharks both qualify in full toward that figure, and the bonus is credited the moment the code is accepted.

Deposits start at R25 on Lightning Bitcoin, every cent of it stays in rand from cashier to payout, and Bitcoin and wire transfers are free from our side. Withdrawals are processed Monday to Friday, the process begins 48 hours after we receive your request, and your FICA documents need approval before that first payout of R500 or more reaches you. Get them in early and you save yourself the wait.

Q: Can I play Scuba Fishing and Lucky Catch with the R250 no deposit coupon?

A: Yes, both titles qualify, since our Springbok coupon covers slots and these two are slots. Wagering is 60x, which works out to R15,000 of playthrough, and the maximum cashout from the bonus is R1,250. Roulette and table games are excluded, so keep that free bonus on the online casino games South Africa calls slots. Spend it on either shark and every rand of it counts toward the playthrough.

Swim with Our Sharks – Play Scuba Fishing & Lucky Catch at Springbok Casino!

Right then, Bokke. Those flags along False Bay exist so that you can weigh up the water before you wade in, and we've handed you exactly the same courtesy on two slots. Scuba Fishing is the steady one at R0.20 a spin. Lucky Catch is the deep end, paying up to 20 free games with added Bursting Wilds to whoever holds their nerve long enough. Both are online casino games South Africa can open on a phone.

Redeem TEST-SPRINGBOK for your free bonus, take both sharks for a swim in practice mode first if you'd rather, then back the one that suits your bankroll. Every rand you deposit at Springbok Casino stays a rand right through to your payout. Live offers land in your account inbox and terms can change, so confirm yours before redeeming. We've got two great whites in the lobby, and the water is lekker!

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