Adventure Guru Travel Stories

We always try and impart with our guests that even though we are providing a shark experience it is to their benefit to take in the whole environment and eco-system around Seal Island. This month we have started to sight the first Southern Right whales that have migrated to False Bay from Antarctica. These sightings should start to increase in August and September. We also had one brief sighting of a school of common dolphin. Two of our highlights of the month were actually of a whale encounter and a couple of seal dives.

On a particularly bumpy and very rainy day we were drifting looking out for predations when a Brydes whale approached our boat. They are normally a shy species of whale but this individual was very curious and circled our boat for about 40 minutes. It would constantly spy-hop a few meters from us and dive to encircle the boat another time. One of the most memorable things about this encounter was just listening to the whale exhale each time it came to the surface. It was pouring with rain but I was quote happy to stand outside to make the most of this special encounter!

A number of days after this we have very calm conditions with virtually no swell. This created a unique opportunity to dive in a sheltered bay around the Island with the seals. This area was full of the young of the year seals who were very curious of the divers and really wanted to interact with them.

Testing nips become a little more than that after a while! I could see that for Chris and the guests that did this dive they really could appreciate how special it was to be able to spend time with the seals underwater and I think also created a stronger bond with the Island itself.

Once again we have had the fascinating experience of seeing a large number of natural breaches. These are normally spectacular breaches for no apparent reason. They often happen very close to the boat and Chris thinks they may either be trying to have a better look at us or are trying to communicate something. My feeling is that as these breaches often happen when we have a lot of activity around the boat this may be some sort of social reaction of sharks being too close to one another.

I can still clearly see a number of the breaches in my mind. For these events you just have to be looking in the right spot at the right time. Very often we will hear someone shout out in amazement and we will know that we have missed something pretty spectacular. They only breach once, so lucky for those that see it.

Now the bad thing is as that these natural breaches tend to happen close to the boat there is a real possibility of a shark landing in the boat with us. This would probably be a fatal event for the shark and a good possibility of terrible injuries for us on board. On one of our trips in July a 4 meter male did a full breach a meter from our boat and landed against the side of it. Very fortunately, the shark landed back in the water but it gave us all a big scare. We have had a guest spend the whole month with us and he was the one who was eye-ball to eye-ball with the shark…I did not see him spending too much time sitting on the gunnels of the boat after that!

As we do not know the reason for this kind of breaching and because there is no warning, there is not much we can do about preventing this.

-Monique Fallows