Daily Trip 13 August 2017
It was a busy Sunday out on the deep blue with 4 trips and some great Southern Right Whale sightings...
Written by Jax, August 13 2017
Guide Summary and Photographs
When one has a couple of great trips early in the morning, you do start to worry a bit about the later ones, because things can often slow down a bit but, this was certainly not the case today with our whale action.
We did not even make it to Pearly Beach today, with all of our prime whale watching happening only 15 minutes out of the harbour towards the infamous Danger Point. We managed to find numerous mating groups within this area with stray whales drifting in and out of sightings throughout all 4 trips.
Mating groups are always a fun find as the animals are often a little, pre-occupied, to notice us at first. We like to move into sightings very slowly to ensure that the animals do pick up on our non-threatening presence eventually before we have a chance to startle them and today, we really reaped the rewards from our efforts when we kept having these beautiful creatures approach the boat.
Like many mammals, Southern Right Whales are incredibly curious about the world around them and will actively approach the object of their fascination in order to get a better view. On our second trip of the day, this meant having an individual come so close that one wrong move from one of those giant pectoral flippers would have landed the whale almost on top of us (in the ironic sense that all of this action happened from below).
On another trip, we had a 2 of these stunners approach and take deep dives only about 20 metres away, exposing those beautiful tail flukes. From tip to tip, the flukes can be 5m wide, which is just over 1/3 of the size of Dream Catcher.
We also got to see a few whales on their backs, exposing the beautiful white patches on their bellies. These patches come in all shapes and sizes on the underside of the whale and are a pretty common occurrence throughout their population.
The whales weren’t the only great sights today, with a mega flock of Cape Cormorants racing us on the first trip, a Great White Shark on the 3rd trip and some beautiful African Penguin rafts on the 4th.
If you would like to get hold of your trip footage, please download the credit card authorization form here to complete and forward it through to bookings@whalewatchsa.com. Please be sure to mention the date and launching time with response. Our team will reply with a direct link to your video footage for download, please allow 72 hours to footage to be uploaded. Download link will be valid for 6 months.
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