Daily Trip 12 December 2017
We got to see our Marine Big 5 on a picture perfect sea day....
Written by Jax, December 12 2017

Guide Summary and Photographs
Summer is in full swing here in Kleinbaai, and we’re enjoying every second of it. We launched at midday again today and had a fantastic time out on the water. It felt as though the animals were handling themselves over today, with us having to do very little searching to find all of the curious creatures we went out to see.
It all started off in front of the Uilenkraalsmond estuary, where we had a very relaxed African Penguin milling about. These little birds can often be found fishing alone, feeding mostly on schooling fish such as sardines. We spent some time watching this little guy chill at the water’s surface, before we went on to do our daily YSI reading.
It was not very long after this stop that we spotted our elusive Humpback Dolphins. These guys tend to be a little more shy than the other dolphins in the area, although we are very lucky to have them pass through a little more frequently than the Bottlenose or Common Dolphins. We had 2 of these beautiful cetaceans around, with them giving us some lovely, close looks. The visibility was also pretty great today which made it super easy to track their movements between the swells. Some great news for these dolphins as a species is that they were recently reclassified to “endangered” according to the IUCN Red List. These dolphins face a variety of threats from humans, which includes the shark nets found along the east coast of South Africa.
After this special sighting, we cruised along the shallows in the direction of Slashfin, spotting 2 more African Penguins along the way. When we arrived at the cage diving vessels, we got to see the shadows of a couple of Bronze Whaler Sharks. These Guys are also known as Copper and Narrow Tooth Sharks and are unfortunately being exploited by the fishing industry for their flesh. This means that we always feel incredibly to see these creatures, alive and well, in our pristine waters.
We spent some time with our Southern Right Whales next, with us finding 6 pairs of these stunning animals off the coast of Pearly Beach. We also had a bit of action here with the whales being in a playful mood. The first pair were moving slowly along, but gave us a really close approach towards the end of our time with them, which left us all in awe. Next, we pulled up next to 2 pairs and spent the remainder of our whale time watching them. These guys were rolling around, with one mom relaxing on her back with her flippers up for quite some time. There was also a mischievous little calf around who spent his time slapping the water, spy hopping, rolling over mom and then repeating. Once we’d seen all we wanted to, we took our last stop by our Cape Fur Seal colony before heading on home.
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