Mossel Bay, Western Cape

Mossel Bay Mosselbaai Mosselbayi
Mossel Bay, Downtown
Mossel Bay Show map of Western Cape Mossel Bay Show map of South Africa Mossel Bay Show map of Africa  Mossel Bay shown within Western Cape
Coordinates: 34°11′00″S 22°08′00″E / 34.18333°S 22.13333°E / -34.18333; 22.13333Coordinates: 34°11′00″S 22°08′00″E / 34.18333°S 22.13333°E / -34.18333; 22.13333
Country	South Africa
Province	Western Cape
District	Eden
Municipality	Mossel Bay
Established	1848
Area
• Total	42.2 km2 (16.3 sq mi)
Population (2011)
• Total	59,031
• Density	1,400/km2 (3,600/sq mi)
Racial makeup (2011)
• Black African	40.1%
• Coloured	40.9%
• Indian/Asian	0.5%
• White	17.6%
• Other	0.9%
First languages (2011)
• Afrikaans	57.4%
• Xhosa	30.7%
• English	6.9%
• Sotho	1.5%
• Other	3.5%
Postal code (street)	6506
PO box	6500
Area code	044

Mossel Bay (Afrikaans: Mosselbaai) is a harbour town of about 130,000 people on the Southern Cape (or Garden Route) of South Africa. It is an important tourism and farming region of the Western Cape Province. Mossel Bay lies 400 kilometres east of the country's seat of parliament, Cape Town (which is also the capital city of the Western Cape Province), and 400 km west of Port Elizabeth, the largest city in the Eastern Cape Province. The older parts of the town occupy the north-facing side of the Cape St Blaize Peninsula, whilst the newer suburbs straddle the Peninsula and have spread eastwards along the sandy shore of the Bay.

The town's economy relied heavily on farming, fishing and its commercial harbour (the smallest in the Transnet Port Authority's stable of South African commercial harbours), until the 1969 discovery of natural offshore gas fields led to the development of the gas-to-liquids refinery operated by PetroSA. Tourism is another driver of Mossel Bay's economy.

The origin of the name Mossel Bay (the Bay of Mussels) has to do with the ascendancy of the Dutch shipping merchants in the late 16th and the early 17th Centuries. In one account, the explorer Cornelis de Houtman named the place Mosselbaai when he stopped there in 1595, whilst in another, the Dutch Admiral Paulus van Caerden named it when he came ashore on 8 July 1601. Whatever the case, though, the mussels and oysters on the shore would have been a welcome addition to the limited diet on which ship’s crews were expected to survive in those days.

Although it is today best known as the place at which the first Europeans landed on South African soil (Bartolomeu Dias and his crew arrived on 3 February 1488), Mossel Bay’s human history can - as local archaeological deposits have revealed - be traced back more than 164,000 years.