Live Learn Love: Whale watching

During the first week of me being in Plett Mark told me that he may have found a job for me in the winter non-breeding season on the whale-watching tourist boats, watching whales. A few days after Shane arrived I had a meeting with Mark and Gwen about my, now definite, job. Gwen is studying whales and looking at their movements along the coast and will be in Plett surveying the whales here from March for a month or so before moving to False Bay to continue to track them. While she is in False Bay it will be my responsibility to be out on the tourist boats most days when they have a trip booked to take photos of the fins for identification purposes. Excitement much! And so it ended up that Shane and I were able to join a Sunday morning trip out whale watching, mostly so I could get a feel for what I would be doing and to chat more with Gwen.

As a kid I have been out to sea and not had any ill effects, but I was nervous for this trip out to sea. Launching was interesting, and off we went. The first sighting was a very bloated and very dead Cape Fur Seal. We went to the Cape Fur seal onshore breeding colony which is at the base of Robberg Peninsular for some epic photo opportunities There was a report of a Bryde's Whale so off we went to see if we could spot it. Unfortunately we were unable to find the whale but we did come across some Bottlenosed Dolphins which were awesome to see!

We arrived back on terra firma about 2 hours later, quite content with the trip and really looking forward to future trips and all the creatures I may see!