Thanks to Eden District Municipality, the Department of Water Affairs and Mossel Bay Municipality - and of course, The Island Residents' Association - for the successful mechanical breach of the river mouth on Tuesday morning.  

As a Temporary Open-Closed estuary, the berm is required to protect The Island from rough and high seas (such as those associated with last week's Spring tide), but with the river rather high from all the rain (the river measured well over 1.7 meters last week) and the Wolwedans Dam full, we're glad to see the mouth open again - nice and close to "Cave Rock" - which also gives us the proper flow around the "back" of The Island.

The online version of The Mossel Bay Advertiser carried a brief write-up (in Afrikaans) together with the following photo:

I spotted 3 crabs at the river mouth as we set out for our low tide beach walk.  It's a bit hard to tell from the pics, but based on the direction of their tracks and the progress they had made by the time we got back 45 minutes later it looks like they were coming into the closed river from the ocean.  Cool!

These were pretty small - the largest was probably only about 15 cm's across (just the body, not the claws) - nothing at all compared to the "monster crab" that lurks under the water elsewhere around The Island!

The river mouth was breached late on Oct 21st (work was finished around 9:30 pm).  Here are some photos courtesy of Eden District Municipality's Vernon Gibbs-Halls: