Daily Trip 19 July 2018

Guide Summary and Photographs

Today’s first tour launched at 10:00 onto a flat sea, with us beginning our trip a little deeper out to sea in the vicinity of Danger Point. Here, we hoped to catch up with a Baleen whale or two, and sure enough we were treated to the sight of a few Humpback Whales. Their migration seems to be in full seeing at the moment with many of these gentle giants moving through our waters at the moment. The highlight of this particular sighting was towards the end of it, when one of the Humpbacks gave us a flick of the tail before taking a slightly deeper dive.

Our next order of business was a visit to our bustling Cape Fur Seal colony, which were lucky to have all year round as these seals are not known to follow a migration. These spirited residents are often heard and smelt before they are seen, shocking many with their sheepish call. Once we’d hung out with them in Shark Alley, we head on towards The Shallows in search of their most feared predator, the jawsome Great White Shark. We were in luck as we arrived, spotting one of these majestic beauties over at one of the cage diving vessels. After this stop, we hugged the coast bag to the harbour to pick up our next group of clients.

The second tour of the day started off with a sighing of a Southern Right Whale who we found cruising in the middle of the bay. We spent a little time with this animal before moving into slightly shallower water, discovering as we left that it was in fact tow whales. It’s really quite incredible how these creatures are able to move around, only to be noticed when they choose to be seen.

In front of the white dunes of Franskraal beach, we caught up with a lone Bottlenose dolphin who was moving just behind the breakers. Although these animals are generally found in pods, we occasionally get to see a lone animal or two moving through our area. Once we’d all gotten a good view of the dolphin, we moved on over to Slashfin who were able to show us a Great White Shark.

After this, we took a stop at Dyer Island to point out some African Penguins on the guano covered boulders. We were also able to spot 3 of these endangered flightless birds just as we were returning to Shark Alley. We went on to spend the next 10 minutes or so taking in the sight of our 60 000 strong colony.

Our very last sighting of the day was an up close encounter with the ordinarily shy Brydes Whale. Out of the 3 species that we see regularly in our waters, we often associate the Brydes with being the least social, but, over the last 6 months or so, have had some incredible sightings of these animals breaching and even Bow Riding.

This whale had a slightly different approach and appeared to follow the boat, swimming next to us or just behind our engines, checking us out from below. It would then surface only meters away from the boat, which was enough to have us all on our toes. This was also a particularly large specimen, who appeared to be just smaller than the boat. We spent a good amount of time with this curios fellow before making our way back to the harbour.