WHALE WATCHING DAY TOUR CAPE TOWN : BOAT AND LAND BASED WHALE WATCHING TOUR

Sardine Run 2018 Teaser

South Africa offers the adventurous diver an almost unlimited choice of dive sites and diving opportunities

The coastline of South Africa is swept by two great ocean currents

South Africa has around 3000km of coastline boasting over 2000 species of fish, 37 species of whale and dolphin

Whale and dolphin watching tour with Oceans Africa

• Early navigators braved the Cape of Good Hope in search of wealth in India and China
• Dive the Garden Route: Mossel Bay, Knynsa, Plettenberg Bay( Plett ) and Port Elizabeth
• The south coast of KwaZulu Natal is blessed with two large offshore reef systems accessible to divers
• Hermanus in South Africa has become known as a mecca for whale watching
• Whale Watching South Africa Humpbacks, southern rights
• Perth shivers as farmers' hopes of bumper crops dashed by record-breaking cold spell

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More Southern Right Whales Off The Coast Of South Africa images

WHALE WATCHING DAY TOUR CAPE TOWN : BOAT AND LAND BASED WHALE WATCHING TOUR

Right whales were first classified in the genus Balaena in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus, who at the time considered all right whales (including the bowhead) to be a single species. Through the 1800s and 1900s, in fact, the family Balaenidae has been the subject of great taxonometric debate. Authorities have repeatedly recategorized the three populations of right whale plus the bowhead whale, as one, two, three or four species, either in a single genus or in two separate genera. In the early whaling days, they were all thought to be a single species, Balaena mysticetus.

The southern right whale was initially described as Balaena australis by Desmoulins in 1822. Eventually, it was recognized that bowheads and right whales were in fact different, and John Edward Gray proposed the genus Eubalaena for the right whale in 1864. Later, morphological factors such as differences in the skull shape of northern and southern right whales indicated at least two species of right whale—one in the Northern Hemisphere, the other in the Southern Ocean. As recently as 1998, Rice, in his comprehensive and otherwise authoritative classification, Marine mammals of the world: systematics and distribution, listed just two species: Balaena glacialis (all of the right whales) and Balaena mysticetus (the bowheads).

In 2000, Rosenbaum et al. disagreed, based on data from their genetic study of DNA samples from each of the whale populations. Genetic evidence now clearly demonstrates that the northern and southern populations of right whale have not interbred for between 3 million and 12 million years, confirming the southern right whale as a distinct species. The northern Pacific and Atlantic populations are also distinct, with the North Pacific right whale being more closely related to the southern right whale than to the North Atlantic right whale. Genetic differences between E. japonica (north pacific) and E. australis (south pacific) are much smaller than other baleen whales represent among different ocean basins.

It is believed that the right whale populations first split because of the joining of North and South America