Daily Trip 26 December 2017

Guide Summary and Photographs

After taking a break on Christmas day, we were excited to head out to sea again to see what the Atlantic had in store for us, and we were not disappointed!

With so many holiday makers in the area, it’s really nice and busy here so we launched our first tour bright and early at 8:00 am. It’s always lovely to be out on the water in the morning, with us starting off the day with almost no wind.

Our very first sighting of the day was a residential Brydes Whale, which we spotted only a few minutes after having left the harbour. We watched this guy come up a few times before continuing with our usual route to the shallows, hugging the coastline, before we spotted one of our ultimate favourite sights, our Indian Ocean Humpback Dolphins. This species is known for being a little more shy than most of your dolphin species, but, you would never say so after this epic sighting.

These dolphins seemed to be having an absolute ball in front of the estuary, jumping and coming up right next to the boat. We got to spend an amazing 10 minutes in their presence, with one dolphin even swimming on its back and exposing its beautiful white belly to the surface. It’s very normal to find these guys alone but we had at least 4 of these beauties really give us a show before they disappeared into the surf.

Our next stop, at Slashfin, yielded just as much luck when we had a Great White Shark swim just below our boat! These curious creatures are known to come up to boats due to their interest in the engines at the back, which give off some vibrations. This individual was pretty scarred but gorgeous none the less, giving us a few more close views before moving back to Slashfin’s chum slick. We stopped by the Great Whites favourite food, our Cape Fur Seals, after this and then head back to the harbour. Our last sighting for the trip was a group of Bottlenose Dolphins in front of the harbour.

Trip 2 started off with a sighting of a juvenile African Penguin in front of the Uilenkraalsmond estuary. This little blue did a bit of preening in front of us, before we head on over to our sister company, Marine Dynamics, where we got a quick look at a great white shark. We head over to Geyser Rock next where we spent some time observing our seals before we got a call from Slashfin’s skipper, informing us of a Southern Right Whale in the shallows! When we caught up with this pair, we quickly identified the mom as the one with the white spot on her back. We travelled with them for a bit before leaving them at the Clyde Reef System.

On our 3^rd and final eco trip for the day, we got to see 2 different species of Sharks, with us finding a Bronze Whaler at Slashfin and then us spotting a Great White at one of the other Company’s. We also got to spend some quality time with our Cape Fur Seal colony.  By this time, the wind had picked up a bit which made for a wet and exciting ride!

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