Bottles And Baby Seal Rescue, 19 December 2018

Today was a beautiful day to head out to sea with gorgeous cumulus clouds hanging overhead and just a bit of a westerly wind blowing. We set out at around lunch time on Dream Catcher, heading straight for Slashfin to spot a Copper Shark. Slashfin was finishing up with their tour, but the sharks were really cooking and we got some great looks at these requiem sharks. The absolute highlight of this stop was when one of the Copper Sharks breached out the water in front of the boat, we’re not too sure why they would do this, but it is a behaviour we are occasionally lucky enough to see and it is really spectacular.

Once we had stopped here, we moved on into Sponge Bay where we found some African Penguins hanging out just above the waterline. These birds were enjoying the sun and we were enjoying watching as they carried on with their day, we also had a look out for some penguin homes and a few other bird species before making our way into world famous waters.

In Shark Alley, we had a rescue mission to undertake when a little pup wondered into the water, which is not ideal as they will usually only begin to swim in a couple of months’ time. We tried twice to get this little one back to the island, but he didn’t seem too thrilled with the idea. We also checked out our other seals, with many in the water trying to escape the heat. On the way out of shark alley, we picked up a plastic bottle and one could see it had been in the sea for a while. This bottle had some fish taking shelter inside, as well as a crab and some goose barnacles attached to the outside of the rim. We let the fish go and then continued along the shallow reefs and shore line before eventually making our way back to the harbour.