informage

Staying with the maritime theme, here's a wave that hit our harbour last weekend. At the time I was sitting mere metres away in our local - the Brass Bell - and heard some murmurs about some people being swept into the sea. We considered joining the throng of spectating tourists, but in true hardened local fashion instead sipped on our beers. Only later on seeing this shot did I realise the scale of what happened. Fortunately both these tourists were rescued by some courageous locals. I imagine they'll be a little more wary of high seas in future (picture courtesy of Martin and Callan - they both sent me copies).

It's whale season in Cape Town and one of the joys of living now in Kalk Bay is that they cruise right past our balcony. Today they were countless whales cavorting around, some nearby and some far. Two in particular Chris and I spied swimming almost into the harbour and so we promptly rushed down for a closer look. These are the somewhat unfortunately named Southern Right Whales, superficially not the most beautiful of creatures but with a striking sentient presence. In the glorious heyday of whale hunting (sarcasm intended) they were named for being the "right" whales to hunt, having an exceptionally high fat yield.

When we got to the harbour even the hardened local fisherman were stopped and gazing in awe. The two leviathans on the right were swimming past the harbour entrance just a metre away from us, barnacle-encrusted backs undulating through the waves. Southern right wales have no dorsal fin, so the protuberance you can see above left results from a lazy sideways roll. Despite their immense size they will sometimes playfully launch themselves out of the water, a behaviour known as breaching. Whilst my attention was focused on the couple nearby, a more distant whale began a series of breaches, perhaps in a bid for attention. My shot is a bit blurry as the whale was at a good distance, but my timing was good!