An Eco Marine Safari, 24 October 2018

What stunning weather we had again today. The incredibly calm conditions are being greatly enjoyed by both passengers and crew alike as this is so unusual in our usually quite stormy waters. We had calm seas for all tours today and by the end of the day the water looked like a lily pond!

On all three tours we saw plenty of southern right whale calves as they continue to move up and down the coast here in South Africa, playing, resting and swimming. It looked like there was quite a lot of swimming practise going on today as the calves get ready to make their long migration south in a month or two.

On the second and third tour of the day we had a special sighting of a brindle whale, one of the southern right whales born nearly all white, and there was actually a second brindle around later in the afternoon.

As well as the whales our passengers on the first two tours got to see bronze whaler sharks by our sister boat Slashfin with some great views in the calm conditions. Instead of a shark on trip three we had an unusual sighting, an ocean sunfish or mola mola was basking at the surface and gave us a great, close look. These huge fish look like their tail has been chopped off, but it has not and they swim by flapping their top and bottom fins from side to side. They are crazy looking and are the largest of all the bony fish, reaching an incredible length of over four metres occasionally, despite only feeding on jellyfish. This last tour also got to see a huge flock of cape cormorants sitting on the water, a dramatic sight with so many birds together.

As usual our cape fur seal colony impressed, with the sight, sound and smell of about 60,000 cape fur seals having to be seen to be believed! All tours also got to see some African penguins, either on Dyer Island or in the water, however it is not always easy to see them from the moving boat.