Please note: 1. This report has not been peer-reviewed; 2. The conditions of use outlined in the report are superseded by the conditions specified by the License field in this metadata record; 3. The contact information included in the report is superseded by the contact information that can be found in the Responsible Parties field of this metadata record.This is the first in a new series of informal reports intended to provide an overview of marine environmental conditions off South Africa and it is envisaged that as from 2007 two reports will be produced per year, one in June and one in December. The current report - as will be the case with future issues - is based on data from a variety of sources, including web sources, satellite sensors, the South African Weather Service, MCM's coastal and moored instruments and MCM's research cruises and inherent to all of these there is an inevitable lag between the time of data capture and the time when the data first become available for use. The lags are all different. For example, wind data from the Cape Point lighthouse is updated monthly, the moored temperature recorders are serviced every three months and the time series of satellite data are updated at irregular intervals resulting in lags which may be as long as a year. Therefore, while it is the aim that the environmental reports should reflect the conditions which prevailed over the months leading up to the reporting date, some of the data series may in fact be as much as a year out of date. This is obviously not a desirable situation and in the future efforts will be made to reduce the lags as far as possible.