Daily Trip Update ,26 October 2018

Our four trips out with the southern right whales on Dream Catcher today were fantastic. All four tours got to see at least one southern right whale calf breach out of the water. One of the questions we are always being asked on the boat is ‘when is the whale going to jump?’ Of course, the answer to this is we have no idea because we can’t ask it! However, southern right whales and calves in particular are known to be one of the species of whale most likely to jump out of the water and they tend to do it more when the wind picks up. Why, we do not know.

On all four tours we got to see plenty of whales, plenty of behaviour with curious heads out of the water and interactions between the Mums and calves, as well as at least one breach. On the last tour of the day the whale we saw breaching was a special calf, a half brindle calf with beautiful markings on the skin, caused by a genetic mutation. This whale will gradually darken with age but never go completely black like most southern right whales.

Three out of our four tours each also got to see at least one African penguin and bronze whaler sharks over by our sister company Marine Dynamics. All the tours of course also experienced the cacophony of sight, sound and smell of our 60,000 strong colony of Cape fur seals also.