An Easterly Wind And An Excellant Trip,30 November 2018

With an easterly bringing a welcome breeze to the bay, we left port at 12:00 today ready to begin our search for some of the bay’s fascinating creatures. It was a lovely day to be out on the water and we had an awesome time travelling along, with the first animals of the day being 2 very relaxed African Penguins over at the Uilenkraalsmond estuary. Our next stop in the shallows at Slashfin.

Here, we stuck around to see if we could spot a Copper Shark lurking, checking out the milky water in the hopes of spotting the charismatic outline of these beautiful creatures. While we waited, we got to spot a White Chinned Petrel, which is a pelagic seabird that we’re lucky to have visit us. After checking out the Petrel and some Cape Cormorants, the Copper Shark appeared and we got a few sights of this little girl as she surfaced to check out the bait line. Once we’d all caught sight of her, we moved on a few hundred meters to the east where we spotted our first Southern Right Whales for the trip.

This was a very relaxed mom and baby who were just hanging out and travelling, so we decided to do the same. After spending some time watching them surface, we decided to venture over to Pearly Beach and see what the area had install for us. We got lucky and spotted a mom and baby playing in the shallow water, so we parked off and watched as baby rolled onto moms’ belly as she lay with her flippers in the air. It is always a special thing to see these animals’ bond, and baby lay on top of mom for a while before rolling over and putting it’s tail on moms head. The whales also had a good look at us.

Once these whales began to head into deeper water, we set our sights on Geyser Rock, eager to spot some little seal pups and watch the older one’s mess about in the water. The island is such a hive of activity at the moment. We cruised by the seals a few times, watching them play and fight and bleat before stopping at Dyer Island and then making our way back into the harbour.