Daily Trip Update,28 October 2018

We took advantage of today’s great weather conditions by embarking on 4 tours on Dream Catcher. The weather is scheduled to pick up tomorrow, so we tried to get out and find as much as we could today. We had a south easterly blowing today which picked up a little at midday before dropping again towards the late afternoon. It was a great day at sea, with us spotting lots of Southern Right Whales, some Copper Sharks, the Cape Fur Seals and on some of our tours, even an African Penguin or two.

The first tour of the day had 4 of the marine big 5, spotting some African Penguins on Dyer Island and getting to spend some quality time with some Southern Right Whales and their calves. The whales seem to be doing a bit of moving at the moment, we still have tons and tons of whales around but they’re not hanging around at the beach like they have been for the last couple of months. This tour also caught sight of a Copper Shark, which are also known as Bronze Whalers, as well as the Cape Fur Seals over at Geyser Rock.

The second tour of the day started off with a sighting of some more Copper Sharks, before we head over towards Pearly Beach where we got to see some gorgeous whale action. We had some super playful Right Whales around and we got to see 2 of these beauties breach whilst another rolled around and gave us a real show. We went on to find some African Penguins in the water and The Cape Fur Seals hanging about in Shark Alley.

Trip 3 got to see an awesome tail slap or two from a young calf just outside of Kleinbaai harbor, behind the large rock that we call Black Sophie. This little baby had whale lice on his tail, which caused some bright orange patches and we got to see him do some slapping before him and his mom began to travel again. We went on to stop at Slashfin, where we got a quick view of a curious Copper Shark before visiting our playful pinnipeds once more.

The final tour of the day also got really lucky, with a little calf who couldn’t seem to get enough of the boat. Baby kept approaching, even when mom was already on her way and this made for a very special sighting for all on board. To these baby whales, the oceanic world they find themselves in is still very new and this makes them curious and excited to explore the things around them. Mom didn’t seem to fussed by this, coming up gently to call baby and then doing some spy hopping of her own before we head off. We stopped for another pair of whales and got to see a Cape Fur Seal pup eat his dinner before visiting his friends living next to Dyer Island.