Daily Trip 17 July 2018

Guide Summary and Photographs

We had a picture perfect sea day, with not a breath of wind to be found. On today’s trip, we managed to spot 4 of the Marine Big 5, including 2 different species of whale! Due to the new moon a few days back, we launched out of Gansbaai harbour just before noon and made our way around Danger Point, into our own bay in the hopes of finding a cetacean or two.

We moved towards The Shallow and it was not long before Kira’s eagle eyes found us the first spout of the day. As we approached, we were excited to find 3 Southern Right Whales. This appeared to be one of our first mating groups of the season, with the males gathering around the female and giving us a lovely show. We watched as they travelled together, giving us the occasional view of their impressive flukes and callosities covered heads.

After an awesome sighting, we decided to move on towards the shark cage diving boats, in the hopes of spotting a Great White Shark. We were in luck as we arrived, with stunning visibility and a 3m White Shark investigating the boat. We got to see this apex predator surface a few times before we decided it was time to pay our island systems a visit!

At Dyer island, we were fortunate enough to have a few African Penguins sitting on top of the boulders in Sponge Bay, which made it easy for us to get a few good views of these endangered creatures. Once we had had our fill of these beautiful black and white birds, we cruised into the world-famous waters of Shark Alley.

Here, we had some quality time with South Africa’s only residential pinniped, the Cape Fur Seal. With 60 000 of these playful pups around, this stop is a firm favorite for many who join us on our tours. There were a fair amount of seals milling around in the alley itself, and after passing them a couple of times we thought we were headed towards the harbour, before a group of Humpback Whales changed our plans.

As we were trying to head in, Kira’s eyes happened upon a breaching whale in the distance, so, naturally we changed our course and headed towards the action. Once we had gotten closer, we were treated to the incredible sight of one of these baleen beauties slapping it’s tail against the water. This is a behavior known as lob tailing, and it is one of our all-time favorite sights out at sea.  We stuck with this group for a while, watching them surface and getting one or two breaches before we let them be and slowly made our way back home.

We could not have asked for a more spectacular trip.

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