22 March 2017

Guide Summary and Photographs

We had an exciting day going out on the old faithful, Whale Whisperer. It felt strange but awesome to be so close to the water again as one gets a completely different perspective of the ocean from this vantage point.

It was overcast this morning and the sea looked a little mysterious with mist in the distance. the water was glossy and mirror like with the only disturbance in it being our wake,that was until a Brydes Whale popped up.

The Whale was spotted earlier in the shallows by our sister company, Marine Dynamics  and it stuck around long enough for us to view him on both of our trips which was pretty awesome.  We generally have to go behind Dyer Island, into the deep sea, to spot them and so it was pretty cool to have one so close to shore.

We went on to see a  Great White, the Cape Fur Seals, African Penguins ( including one on Geyser Rock which is a potentially lethal decision on the Penguins behalf, sitting amongst the enemy) and Some Cape Cormorants on the trip. We also saw a Great White with some interesting white markings on it which can be seen below.

On our second trip, the sun was out in full force and we definitely got a taste of the heat wave that the Overberg region is currently experiencing. When we stopped by Slashfin, we were pretty lucky to see one of the bay’s iconic sharks, Mini Nemo. This 3.3m male gets his name from his right pectoral fin, which is considerably smaller than the left, some thing we believe to be genetic. He visits us about 5 times a year and so it is always nice to see a familiar face (or fin) in the bay.

We were also pretty lucky to intercept our research vessel, Lwazi whilst they were in the midst of a tagging operation. Alison Towner, our Dyer island Conservation Trust biologist and her team were in search of a Great White Shark that would allow for them to attach an R-coded acoustic tag to it. This is a form of passive tagging which requires us to drop receivers into the waters of our study area ( The greater Dyer Island eco system), every time a shark swims within a certain radius o the receiver, information is received from the tag about the sharks whereabouts.

Our company firmly believes that the more that we know about our ocean life, the better we can protect them and so it was pretty special to be able to share this with our clients today.

We also got to spot 2 of the other members of our Marine Big 5, the Cape Fur Seal and African Penguin on our trip as well as a Sub Antarctic Skua ( A avian winter visitor to our coast) which made for a pretty successful day.

For more Whale facts and updates, also “Like” our Dyer Island Cruises facebook fan page. If you would like to review your trip online to help others choose the right whale watching company, please visit our TripAdvisor page and leave your feedback