Archived from the original on 19 October 2007.
The rocks that form Cape Agulhas belong to the Table Mountain Group, often loosely termed the Table Mountain sandstone. The waters of the Agulhas Bank off the coast are quite shallow and are renowned as one of the best fishing grounds in South Africa. A survey marker and a new marker depicting the African continent are located at the most Southern tip of Africa. This mechanism constitutes one of the key elements in the global conveyor belt circulation of heat and salt.Ĭape Agulhas has a gradually curving coastline with rocky and sand beaches. While retroflecting, it pinches off large ocean eddies (Agulhas rings) that drift into the South Atlantic Ocean and take enormous amounts of heat and salt into the neighbouring ocean. South of Cape Agulhas the warm Agulhas Current that flows south along the east coast of Africa retroflects back into the Indian Ocean. Agulhas is serviced by the nearby small airport of Andrew's Field. The cape is within the Cape Agulhas Local Municipality in the Overberg District of the Western Cape province of South Africa. The cape was named by Portuguese navigators, who called it Cabo das Agulhas- Portuguese for "Cape of Needles"-after noticing that around the year 1500 the direction of magnetic north (and therefore the compass needle) coincided with true north in the region.
Cape Agulhas is located in the Overberg region, 170 kilometres (105 mi) southeast of Cape Town.