Daily Trip 24 July 2018

Guide Summary and Photographs

We got to spend time with both Humpback and Southern Right Whales on our trips today, with some active Humpback Whales on our first tour and a close up encounter with a Southern Right Whale on the second. The wind picked up a little today, with a westerly bringing some chill to an otherwise sunshine-y day.

Our first launch was at 10:00 and we wasted no time heading towards Danger Point in search of everyone’s favourite gentle giants. We didn’t have to do too much searching, with Kira spotting some white water in the distance. This is always a great sign, as any disturbance in the ocean could be an indication of an animal just below. This disturbance happened to be due to 2 very active Humpback Whales who would breach one minute, and flipper slap the water the next, which made for a truly remarkable sight.

Humpback whale flippers look a little like the arms of a ballerina and are the longest of all the whale flippers in the world. These whales were having an absolute ball and we were soaking in every minute of it. We had sporadic breaches all throughout the sighting, and the one whale even through in some lobtailing, throwing his tail up high in the air only to let it come crashing down moments later. After this incredible sight, we made our way into Shark Alley to hang out with our Cape Fur Seals. As playful and clumsy as ever, we enjoyed this delightful stop before taking a stop at Dyer Island where we put on our eagle eyes to try to spot some African Penguins on Dyer Island.

The second tour of the day launched into clear skies although the clouds became a little moody towards the end of the tour and we were able to spot 4 members of our Marine Big 5. We began our search for whales and Danger Point and moved up towards Dyer Island, spotting some endangered Cape Gannets along the way. We then took a cruise into the channel between Dyer and Geyser Rock, where we had some very curious seals come up and check the boat out.

We then moved a little deeper out to sea and looped our way towards the shallow waters of Pearly Beach, once again searching for some whales. Just in front of this scenic little tourism town, we were ecstatic to find what appeared to be a mating group of Right Whales. We had 3 individuals in the group, and we got to see some tail action from these baleen beauties as they fooled around below the surface.

The highlight of this sighting was one nosy whale, who decided that we were worth some investigation, this curious fellow broke way from the group, turning back and coming right in to see what exactly we were doing in his neck of the woods. Nothing quite beats a sight like this, so we moved off shortly after the whale took a dive and head towards Slashfin.

Just before we took a stop here, we spotted a juvenile African Penguin sitting on the surface of the water. We got some good views of this baby blue before making our way to the Cage. We got lucky as we arrived with a 4m female Great White erupting from the shallows and giving us all a splendid view of her stream line figure as she investigated our bait line. This marked the end of our tour, with us heading back to Kleinbaai full of smiles.

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