After nearly three months, we finally managed to Do It: we went whale watching! And it was quite spectacular: we saw about a dozen of them, and one on an average weighs 50 tons, so that would make 600 tons of whale flesh that we spotted! Currently, it is the mating season so Love was in the water ;-)
The Southern Right whale is between 11 to 18 metres long (our guide mentioned one that was 20m long) and its colour is grey. As an adult, it can weigh between 25 and 66 tons. It can swim about 5km per hour. You might think a whale could swallow a chair but reputedly it can't even swallow an orange. Good thing for Jonas, a Belgian student accompanying us on the trip.
As you can see from the pictures, they have got wart like things on their back. The warts never change and make different patterns from each other which make them recognizable. This whale's common name is the Southern Right whale because it lives in the southern hemisphere and at the time was the right whale to kill. Why? Because it was a slow swimmer and it had so much blubber it seldom sank. They are found along South Africa's coastline. They travel 2000 km from the Southern Ocean to the Antarctic for the rest of the year. They come and have their babies in South African coastal waters in spring and in 3 months they go back. The length of pregnancy is 6 months to a year. 4500 Southern Right whales live in the southern hemisphere, 270 of these have been found between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. 1500 of these whales come to this coastline. For pix and video, got to Thomas post or youtube
The Southern Right whale is between 11 to 18 metres long (our guide mentioned one that was 20m long) and its colour is grey. As an adult, it can weigh between 25 and 66 tons. It can swim about 5km per hour. You might think a whale could swallow a chair but reputedly it can't even swallow an orange. Good thing for Jonas, a Belgian student accompanying us on the trip.
As you can see from the pictures, they have got wart like things on their back. The warts never change and make different patterns from each other which make them recognizable. This whale's common name is the Southern Right whale because it lives in the southern hemisphere and at the time was the right whale to kill. Why? Because it was a slow swimmer and it had so much blubber it seldom sank. They are found along South Africa's coastline. They travel 2000 km from the Southern Ocean to the Antarctic for the rest of the year. They come and have their babies in South African coastal waters in spring and in 3 months they go back. The length of pregnancy is 6 months to a year. 4500 Southern Right whales live in the southern hemisphere, 270 of these have been found between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth. 1500 of these whales come to this coastline. For pix and video, got to Thomas post or youtube
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