Daily Trip 04 December 2017

Guide Summary and Photographs

We’re still really enjoying our whale sightings here in Kleinbaai with quite a few mom, calf pairs still in the vicinity.

Due to last night’s super moon, we launched a little later today, only hitting the sea at midday. With the sun high in the sky, we hugged the coast along the ivory coloured beaches of Franskraal and Die Grys before stopping over by our sister company, Marine Dynamics.

Here, we were once again incredibly lucky to see a Great White Shark. We seem to have a couple of new animals in the bay with a large female of around 4 meters appearing around the cage diving vessels. Great Whites are a highly migratory species and in this area, we have seen one of our sharks go as far as Western Australia and back. This means that we’re constantly getting new sharks moving in and out of the bay. We got to see the shark come up a couple of times before we moved on, in the hopes of finding some of our whales.

In the last two years, most of our whales have head home a little early but this year we’re definitely still in luck with our sightings not decreasing just yet. We’re really hoping that the whales will stick around for the next couple of weeks and, so far, so good!

We travelled past the coastal town of Pearly Beach before finding our first whales. We’re really grateful to have our Southern Right Whales stick so close to the coast, which allows us to watch them so close to home, we stayed with this mom and calf for a bit, watching them come up to breathe a few times before spending some time with 3 more pairs.

There was one little calf having an absolute ball, rolling around in the breakers and the clambering onto moms back as he continued to have the time of his life. Southern Rights are really tactile animals and they also spend a lot of their time at the surface, which has earned them the reputation for being the “right” whale to watch.

Geyser Rock was our next stop, where we got to see our flourishing Cape Fur Seal Colony. At this time of year, we have 10 to 12 000 babies born. These guys reach sexual maturity between 3 and 6 years old with the males establishing a harem with up to 50 females. The most amazing thing by far about these guys? The females actually delay their impregnation for 4 months, so that their 8 month gestation period times up with the next mating season. After watching adults and pups alike, we made our way around Dyer Island and then back to the harbour.

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