Bottlenose Dolphins in Monochrome
By Lloyd Edwards

Sunday, 6th September 2020

After having spent a wonderful day at Bird Island on our last cruise we headed West to the St Croix Island group off the new port at Coega. As per our previous news article we had already been treated to breaching humpback whales, albatross, white sharks, the largest gannet colony on the planet and dolphins surfing the waves at Woody Cape. What more could we have asked for?

Besides the ever present African penguins on St Croix Island there were no signs of any cetaceans. We carried on to Brenton Rock about a mile further to the West. Clouds had moved in and the light was fading quickly. Not usually a photographers dream. One of the guests called out that she had seen a splash near the island. We sped off to investigate and found a school of around 400 Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins hugging the “bricks”. They were not at all interested in our catamaran “My China” and carried on socializing and mating. We were tired after a full day and moved off towards port.

All of a sudden the dolphins changed their mood and started following our boat, much to the delight of the passengers. They started riding our stern waves and did numerous breaches next to us. It is always a challenge photographing in low light and the ISO needs to be quite high which causes a lack of quality in the images. Anyway the below photos will give you an idea of the wonderful time that was had, both by us and the dolphins. A fantastic ending to an incredible outing in Algoa Bay! Africa's Greatest Marine Wilderness for sure!