Marine Eco Safari, 18 November 2018

We had for some adventure whale watching out there today with a strong easterly breeze blowing. However it didn’t stop us having two successful trips out with the whales and a few waves thrown in for good measure!

In the bay close to the harbour we still have southern right whales to watch, giving us a wonderful sheltered area to work in from the easterly wind. On both trips we got to see mother and calf pairs both in deeper water swimming as well as hanging out in the shallows. On trip two we got to see our lone calf yet again. We are quite surprised it remains in the bay and still we are able to report that the calf does not look thin or lethargic, so we still believe it might be feeding from other mothers. However, is this going to mean it is able to join another mother and calf to head all the way to the feeding grounds 2000-3000km away is anyone’s guess. However, we are happy to keep seeing it looking pretty healthy as far as we can tell.

Trip one got to see a small group of our Indian Ocean humpback dolphins briefly that were moving through the shallows. This is a very rare coastal species of dolphin.

Both our tours today got to see nice active bronze whaler sharks over by Slashfin who looked like they were having a great day out there with the sharks.

Once we had made it through the reef system leading to shark alley, the bit where we got everyone a bit wet (which is why everyone had full wet-weather gear) we got to spend time with the cape fur seal colony on geyser rock. Even though we get to go there pretty much every day it is still an impressive sight.