“The Sea Was Alive”: Southern Right Whales Return to the Western Cape

Late August and a gyrocopter lifted off from an airstrip near Gansbaai. Flying low over the water with conservation photographer Jean Tresfon, researchers from the University of Pretoria’s Mammal Research Institute Whale Unit counted nearly 600 southern right whales (296 mothers with their calves, and a scattering of solitary adults) most of them gathered in the sheltered waters between Struisbaai and De Hoop Nature Reserve. Alongside them was a newborn humpback and her mother, pods of bottlenose dolphins numbering in the hundreds, and common dolphins by the thousand. As the Whale Unit themselves said: the sea was alive.

It’s a scene that unfolds along this coastline every year, though few of us ever stop to ask where these whales have come from, or how they find their way back.

Besides conducting annual aerial surveys since 1969, over the past several years, the Whale Unit has fitted a number of southern right whales with satellite tags, and the data has rewritten what we thought we knew about their movements. Now we know that there is no single migration route, no well-worn highway across the ocean – each whale seems to write its own map. Some head deep into the Southern Ocean, toward the edge of the Antarctic ice; others linger in temperate waters, foraging wherever the ocean offers something to eat. A few have been tracked crossing the entire South Atlantic (journeys of some 10,000 kilometres) in search of food.

One tagged mother, known to researchers as Myelin, took a route closer to home. Rather than heading out into open ocean, she travelled north up the West Coast, nearly as far as the Namibian border, before turning back toward the Cape with her calf in tow. It’s whales like Myelin, the early arrivals, that De Hoop Nature Reserve’s guests occasionally spot in the cooler months before the season is properly underway, pausing to feed along our coastline before settling in to mate or give birth in calm, sheltered bays. Migration, as we’ve learned, has no fixed rules for southern right whales. Only the return does.

At Morukuru Family De Hoop, this is the season we love. Peak whale season runs from August through October, with sightings continuing until November, and there is no better vantage point than the cliffs and beaches of De Hoop Nature Reserve, where whales can be watched from the shore. September and October tend to bring the reserve properly to life with mothers teaching calves to breach in the shallows. It is an encounter that needs nothing beyond a quiet morning and a good pair of eyes.

Southern right whale individuals are identified by their unique pattern of callosities and long-term research by the Whale Unit suggests these whales are working harder than ever to find food along their journeys. What was once a three-year cycle of mate, calve, rest, is now around five years. A gentle reminder that the opportunity and freedom to watch a mother and calf from our shoreline is truly precious.

So, join us and watch the ocean do what it has always done best: remind us how much of the world remains, quite wonderfully, beyond our understanding.