The right whale to watch and protect

The right whale to watch and protect

By Jax Bath

This week’s ocean story is a deeper dive into Walker Bay’s favourite seasonal celebrity, the Southern Right Whale. These charismatic creatures make their way from Sub Antarctic regions in the winter months, gracing our shores between June and December, although the occasional straggler can be found earlier on in the year.

These whales are hard to confuse with any other whale in our waters. Their skin is for the most part all black and where most whales have a dorsal fin, you will find none on the back of a Southern Right Whale. Perhaps most distinctive are the rough white patches on their heads.

These patches have by some been known as rock gardens, but the real name for the patches are callosities. Like the callus that forms on our hands, the callosity is a rough, thick patch of skin. The whales are born with it and after birth, these patches will become covered in cyamids (or whale lice), which have travelled from mother whale onto the baby.

After some time, barnacles will also attach to the face, giving the callosity its chalky white coloration. Each whale is born with a unique pattern of these rough patches which science uses to identify the whales as individuals. Not only is their appearance unique from the other whale species of the area but their blow is also somewhat unusual, as their two blowholes open up to form a V-shape blow as they exhale.

These blows can often be seen from shore, with the whales making their way into exceptionally shallow waters in our area! Sometimes on the whale watching vessels, we see them in only around 4m of water, with the whales hanging out so close to shore that the boats aren’t able to make their way into the surf.

Luckily for us, however, many Southern Right Whales are curious by nature and will often take it upon themselves to come in for a closer inspection of our vessel. In past years, there have been whales in the shallows who have clocked the boat from a few hundred metres away and then proceeded to breach towards us through the swell, before eventually settling in to have a look at us.

They sometimes circle boats, popping up at various intervals to the delight of all on board. Their eyesight is not their primary sense, but when they’re as close as this they’re definitely checking us out, though their excellent underwater hearing is most likely what alerted them to our presence in the first place.

Click on the newspaper below to read more (see page 17).