Small Sardines Aplenty
By Lloyd Edwards

1. News

Well at least we know for sure what the animals had been feeding on during this cruise. We witnessed the “Kalahari”, a purse seiner in action. He was fishing about 25km from the African Penguin breeding island of St Croix. This is well outside the recently imposed 20km fishing ban zone. Unlike the shark long liners, it is nice to see this part of the fishing industry obeying the regulations.

While in the last two posts, I concentrated on Cape Gannets, I will now introduce you to some of the other predators that feast on the sardines.

The most prolific of the big ones are the Long-beaked common dolphins. It is these guys that drive the fish up towards the surface from the depths. Everyone (including us) follows their movements and time and again it leads you to the action. Common dolphins, like the name suggests, are found in many oceans around the planet, in temperate and tropical waters.

The biggest is the Bryde’s whale, which is also my favourite cetacean. They are so elusive and will often disappear without trace, even on a dead calm day. They follow a little way behind the dolphins and listen to the sounds made by the schooling fish that have been herded into stationary bait balls. They also listen to the sounds made by other predators like penguins and gannets. They do not possess echolocation, which is used by the dolphins and other toothed whales.

Once they locate the position of the bait ball, they use their eyes to spot the dense concentrations near the surface, where it is more sunlight. Once the dolphins chased a school of fish under our catamaran and we got rammed by a Bryde’s whale!

We have had so many Sooty Shearwaters in the bay these last few weeks. The numbers must be in the tens of thousands. They are normally found much further out to sea, but never in such huge numbers.

Taken with a Nikon Z9 Mirrorless, ISO 280, 70mm zoom, f/10 and 1/2000th second. The gannets need to be careful not to hit the dolphins, it would be a fatal collision.

A Bryde's whale hits the surface for a quick breath in between feeding bouts.

Like Stuka dive bombers, they career off towards their prey.

A nice close up of a common dolphin . . . they are so beautiful!

Jake Keeton on "My China" skirts around the outside of a feeding frenzy. Always nice to see our PE landmarks in the background.

This Bryde's whale surfaces amongst some Sooty Shearwaters, which scavenge the leftover pieces of fish.

When I take images like this, I am not looking through the camera, but at the whole scene and clicking the shutter when the moment feels right.

You can see the small sardine going down the throat of the one in the front.

A Bryde's whale surfaces in a hurry and onto the next lunge feed.

Sooty Shearwater Central with the Nelson Mandela University building the background. Quite crazy that they have an Ocean Sciences Campus . . . but not a single whale or dolphin scientist! We have imported three for next January, to help us with our Addo Canyons Project.

Captain Eddy of the "Kalahari" spoke to us about his catch. The small sardines had fouled his net and he was struggling to get them out.