Southern Right Whale Safari ,07 December 2018

The rain showers moved off just in time for our tour today which was spent in calm seas with just a little swell running in places. We still have 100% sightings of southern right whales for our tours in December and today spent time with a mother and her slightly smaller calf over in Pearly Beach. The mother whale seemed to get used to us, giving us some very nice close looks as she slowly swam along with her calf.

When we visited our sister company Marine Dynamics, we got to see a lot of bronze whaler shark activity today, with four sharks very active around the boat.

On today’s tour we saw African penguins on the water and over on Dyer Island, with one adult on the water and a number of penguins sitting by the rocks over in Sponge Bay.

Some of the young cape fur seals were in an active mood with lots of leaps out of the water as we cruised through shark alley, and we also got to see an unusual sight with a number of giant petrels feeding on a dead seal that from what we could tell looked to have died on natural causes. Giant petrels are a little like the vultures of the southern hemisphere ocean and are impressive large birds that come to our coast all the way from Antarctica and the sub-Antarctic island where they breed.