Daily Blog: 18 November 2024
Today, we were treated to warm, calm weather out at sea, making for a fantastic day!
On our way out to the shallows this morning we encountered a majestic Southern Right Whale gently swimming. This guy also gave us a couple of lovely waves with his tail! A brief but beautiful encounter. However we had sharks on the mind this morning and were keen to get out to our anchor spot! 15 minutes in and our first shark joined us for some stunning passes, getting our cage divers all excited. And then Scarlett showed herself once again, in all her grace! Not far behind Scarlett was Sarko. Our two iconic sharks gave us some great underwater viewing opportunities, as well as some great surface action. If that wasn’t enough for us then we were joined by a 3.8m white shark towards the end of our first trip. This individual was seen yesterday afternoon for the first time too, so it is good that we’re getting to meet new sharks that seem to be sticking around in the shallows.
For our second trip the Southern Right whales were still around and we were able to enjoy a little view of them as we moved into the Shallows. Once on anchor it wasn't long till our first shark showed up, in fact most of our guests were still changing into their wetsuits. This first was 'Scarlett' back again from the first trip, she made a few passes and continued to show up every now and again throughout the trip. The second shark was our 'Scarlett' lookalike, with the tip of the caudal fin also missing on this shark. The last two animals to visit Slashfin for our second trip of the day were juveniles, one the feisty female 'Sarko' the other an animal we are do not know well and which is estimated to be approximately 2.5m in length. Not only did our guests get to see White sharks but also another species of shark, the Copper shark or Bronze Whaler, not a common sight through out the year but something we have been seeing frequently over the last few days. The rain that was predicted for the day held off right until the end of the trip when we were backing up, good timing to head back to land and into the warm Great White House for some hot soup.
Location: Joubertsdam
Water Temperature: 15.6°C + 15.6°C
Depth: 9.1m + 9.8m
Visibility: 1m + 1m
Number of Sharks: 4 + 4
Conditions: Sun streaking through the clouds this morning with a bit of wind and swell
