Humpback Calf in Dire Straights
By Lloyd Edwards

Tuesday, 6th October 2026

Wow, what an interesting 24 hours this has been in Algoa Bay. The Raggy Charters team had just finished cruising around St Croix Island, when they saw what looked like a Humpback calf in distress, accompanied by two adults.

The calf was swimming on the surface with its mouth agape, at a really fast speed. It looked deformed, entangled, injured by a ship strike, possibly dead and being towed by one of the adults, or all of the above!

The NSRI disentanglement team was summoned and the team stood by for 3 hours. Sean Pike launched the drone and got some amazing footage as attached.

NSRI arrived and did a closeup inspection, which revealed no ropes or other entanglements. We left the scene with the pod heading towards Bird Island.

I posted a video on the Cetal Fauna Facebook Group, which generated a massive amount of interest, from learned scientists around the world. Everyone had their theory which pretty much covered all of the above.

During the night and early this morning, Sean started editing the drone footage. It culminated in the realization that, although the calf had been injured, it was still very mobile.

It was seen using its pectoral fins, arching it's back prior to a dive, closing it's mouth and doing a breach almost clearing the water (not captured but observed). It also dived on one side of the two adults and surfaced on the other, after some seconds.

In contrast to the distressing video of the calf just swimming at a furious speed on the surface, seemingly unable to do anything else, the new footage filled us all with a sense of relief.

While the calf is able to manoeuvre quite well, it is definitely injured. The only observable evidence is damage to the baleen plates on the right side of the mouth towards the rear. This could possibly have been caused by a rope.

Raggy Charters is a licensed Boat Based Whale Watching operator in Algoa Bay. We have been trained in disentangling whales. Our drone operator is commercially certified.

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