Better Than the White Shark

I met some new friends in JBay and was invited to drive down to Mossel Bay to surf.  Sounds great, right? New friends, surf... what's the problem?  Well, I was warned by my friends in Cape Town that if I was worried about sharks that I shouldn't surf Mossel Bay or Plett because those places were known to be "very sharky".  That thought was not on the forefront of my mind.  I just wanted to surf another new spot and there was my opportunity.

Of course, before I jumped in the water I asked about the shark.  The locals told me that Seal Beach was just right there (you could see it right from the beach and I could actually SUP to it if I wanted) and the sharks had enough feed that they didn't want a human.  Okay, sounded good to me.  So I jumped in to surf.

I only caught a couple of waves when I started paddling out again and saw a dark figure in the distance.  I thought to myself, "Too big to be a seal".  My curiosity got the best of me and I started paddling toward it (Why? It could have been a shark but I still went for it.)  It breeched and I saw its ugly head, "A hippo!"  I turned to start paddling back to shore because Hippos are one of the Big Five and have more attacks on humans than the other four (due to humans swimming in unknown hippo-infested territory).  Well, if you know your mammals, you'll know that hippos don't swim in the ocean.  Duh?!  (When you check out the video, you'll see why I thought it was one.)  A surfer yelled out, "Did you see the ____?"  Immediately I turned back to check it out.  See the clip below:



It was a Southern Right Whale!  I couldn't believe my eyes.  When he went back under, I quickly paddled back to shore to grab a camera and then paddled back out to see it.  I probably got as close as 20feet next to it.  After a while, a chopper started circling above.  I was a little suspicious but stayed on lock with the whale.  But when I saw the speed boat coming our way I didn't want to stay to see what they wanted and I booked it to shore.  I found out from the locals that there is a law that states you can only get as close as 200m close to a whale.  If I would have gotten fined, it would have been worth it.