A Westerly Wind And Wonderful Whales, 15 October.

We had another four trip day out on the water with the whales today. There was a bit of wind blowing in from the west giving us some bumpy moments, but the bay where we were watching the whales was reasonably sheltered. With so many southern right whales around we can pick and choose the whales we spend time with, ensuring we do not spend too long with any one pair.

The first trip of today was exceptionally lucky as while we were watching a new pair of whales in the bay (the mother whale has a long white scar on her body) the whales became surface active. Both the mother whale and the calf breached, and what was crazy was the female had her mouth open on one occasion. The calf also did a number of lob-tails, slapping its tail on the water.

We saw this pair of whales on other tours today as well. It looks like this female whale may have been entangled in fishing line at some point in her life, as the scar on her body is very straight. Luckily she seems very healthy now and she allowed us some great looks at her lovely calf. 

We had close approaches to the boat by whales on all the other tours of the day, including a calf rolling with its eye out of the water on trip three.

Of course all our passengers also got to enjoy the incredible sight of our seal colony on Geyser Rock. With the mating season approaching we are seeing more and more big bull seals come to the island. African Penguins were sighted on all trips, the last trip of the day getting to see a number of penguins sitting on the rocks in Sponge Bay. We also managed to see a bronze whaler shark by Slashfin on three out of the four tours today, though the sightings were sometimes brief.