08 April 2017

Guide Summary and Photographs

After a few no sea days, the weather finally cleared up and we were able to hit the water again.  We left the harbour with the shallows sight, cruising along our rugged piece of coastline. A couple of our guests were fortunate enough to see two Flamingos flying over us, which is not something we get to see every day. These guys are similar to our large baleen friends, the whales, in that they are also filter feeders.

Back to our marine life, our stop at Slashfin saw a very active juvenile shark go for the bait, showcasing their lightning like speed Great Whites can move up to 50km/h but only do so in short bursts as this uses a lot of energy. We didn’t stick around too long here today as the sharks are often very attracted to the vibration of our motors at the back of the boat. This can cause the shark to desert the cage diving operation and follow us around for a bit, which is of course not what we would like to achieve with our stop. With this is mind, we moved towards our bird watching hotspot, Dyer Island.

We like to stop at the island to see if we can point out some African Penguins on land but, unfortunately it was a little tough to spot them today. Luckily, we managed to spot one sitting on Geyser rock and two out at sea before the trip ended, so we were not left too disappointed. The little Penguin on Geyser Rock is a slight cause for concern as these guys are often killed by the seals. Our seals are quite intelligent in that they have learned to go for the stomachs of our seabirds. This saves them some hunting as the birds usually return with a stomach full of anchovies or pilchards, the favourite food of the Cape Fur Seal. The rest of the Seabird is generally just left and this practice is wreaking havoc on our already stressed sea bird populations.

We love them none the less and visited them next. Cape Fur seals are part of the family “Otariidae” which, to put it simply, means that they have an external ear. There are around 15 species of “Eared” seals throughout our planets oceans but, they are the only ones endemic to the Southern African coastline.

Due to the wind, we decided to head towards Danger Point to finish off the last little bit of our trip. We spotted some porpoising seals and a Cape Gannet on the way and finished off our trip with a sighting of 2 African Penguins just a little before the harbour.

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