Sea Search

07/09/2026

A huge thank you to Guardians of the Deep NPC and Tenacity Computing for donating a new desktop computer to Sea Search!

More desktop computers mean we can run more programs for longer without relying on personal laptops or on students with access to technology. With so much data sitting on our servers, having wired-in computers makes a real difference when analysing data such as acoustic recordings and sorting through photo ID data, saving us from tying up personal laptops or pulling large data files over Wi-Fi

Thank you for helping us do more with our data! 🐬💻

Learn more about the ReWild Tech project: https://guardiansofthedeep.org.za/rewild-tech/

06/09/2026

I do love a good pile of 'socialising' dolphins. One of the main activities of Heaviside's dolphins when they're inshore is "socialising" (and then some 'resting' after as you can imagine) . They're unusual for a coastal dolphin in that they actually feed WAY offshore on things like young hake (around 50-100m water depth).

What is 'socialising'? Hmm well - lets just say that the dolphin in photo 2 is not popping up next to the boat to sell us a a granadilla lolly to make us jolly. And by slide 4 i think it's fairly obvious that's he's getting pretty jolly himself. Gets a little NSFW from there..

Also fairly obvious from the first and last photos is that that we have multiple males around the focal female in what we call 'scramble competition' - multiple males competing for mate access and then s***m competition will help sort it all out down the line (right whales use a similar competitive process). We really don't know the details in Heaviside's dolphins - perhaps a project for the future assuming we don't all die in next year's mega El Nino?

And that 2nd last photo is I think pretty unusual -- 4 dolphin willys in one photo! And thus ends today's biology lesson :)

Stellenbosch University

05/09/2026

Heaviside's dolphins in Granger bay doing their best to emulate last week's flyover over@dhlstadium . Those little dolphins are getting some serious air...but not quite clearing the stadium just yet!

Actually we were out there photographing dolphins as part of our study investigating the numbers and residency of these little endemic dolphins. Remember - this is an open project and all citizen science contributions are welcome thanks to the magic of helping us speed up the matching and host and open online catalogue --

See last photo for one of several resident dolphins we've photographed before - this guy back in 2024 and 2025

Love Cape Town

29/08/2026

And some more photos confirming ID. This is the furthest east sighting of the pair to date...

29/08/2026

well well well - Port and Starboard just popped up in Chintsa in the Eastern Cape! Last seen around Cape Town a few weeks ago and not reported east of Cape Agulhas for several years prior to that. These two keep developing new and interesting foraging tactics - they're a fascinating pair to keep track of! The E. Cape is where most white sharks are reported these days.

More clips on their FB page
Thanks for sharing these great video and images

04/08/2026

For years, bioacoustics was largely confined to academic labs and specialised research projects. But with the help of the African Bioacoustics Community, which Sea Search has run since 2017, we’ve seen a massive surge of local interest from people outside traditional research and industry.

Every day, nature enthusiasts are increasingly eager to tune into the sounds happening right in their back gardens.

To bridge that gap, we've started hosting our days in the southern suburbs of Cape Town. These hands-on sessions are designed to give participants a solid grounding in the fundamentals of acoustic field recording and show them how to navigate online sound libraries.

We hosted our most recent training day over the weekend, with a full class and a broad range of participants from students to retirees, and novice bird watchers to experienced twitchers!
We'd love to share this heartwarming feedback from one of the participants:

"We had such an interesting day yesterday with Dr Tess Gridley of Sea Search learning about Sound Recording for Citizen Science.

I discovered amazing apps that can be used to record and identify bird songs super easily. I learnt about sound recording and how best to edit, and where to upload them for Citizen Science.

I also discovered more about a huge man made lake in Capricorn Business Park and was lucky enough to see and hear loads of birds, including a black headed Heron, Karoo Prinia, sunbirds, little grebes and many more. Right on our doorstep !

Big thanks to Tess and Simon for yesterday. I will be happily occupied over the foreseeable future identifying bird sounds, recording, editing and uploading like a pro 😁"

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us and brought such great energy. We can't wait to hear what you record next! 🌿🎙️

📹🐦🐦‍⬛🦆🪿🎧

Tickets for our next event on November 1st are now live! quicket.co.za/events/389597-sound-recording-for-citizen-science-1st-november/

24/07/2026

Don't you just love when a humpback whale you photographed in a supergroup off Hout Bay in Nov 2015...was then seen a few years later in 2022 by Bernophillipson Phillipson off northern KZN and then last week again (Jul 2026) by in Plettenberg Bay! (Who took the ID photo posted here)

a) this is just incredibly cool to have this ability to track our whales from photographs across the whole world in near real time (Thanks Happywhale!) - in previous years this would have involved literal years of collating photos and manually checking the IDs on a PC..

but also

b) The whales feeding off the west coast of SA were historically thought to be part of the West African population which breeds off Gabon/Angola.. but we now know from this whale (and many others) that many whales from the East coast population ALSO feed here, highlighting the importance of this area for hungry hungry humpbacks... and also as an area of potential cultural exchange for song etc etc ( will give us some v cool insights on that soon!)

23/07/2026

Interested in learning the fundamentals of acoustic field recording? You're in luck! We are hosting another Recording for Citizen Science day on the 2nd of August.

Tess and the African Bioacoustics team will take you through the fundamentals of listening, recording, and understanding bioacoustics right here in Cape Town!

Limited spaces available, so don't miss out! Book your spot below
https://www.quicket.co.za/events/384430-sound-recording-for-citizen-science/

Join Dr. Tess Gridley and the African Bioacoustics Community team in Muizenberg, Cape Town, for a hands-on workshop on Sunday, 2nd August 2026!

10/07/2026

You might have seen some of the media articles doing the rounds - the good news coming out of this paper has been widely shared. Led by Dr Bridget James during her post doc with us last year and including sightings from the Namibian Dolphin Project, Jean Paul Roux, Monique Radford and John Paterson -- This was originally just a little note compiling sightings and strandings of the BLUE and FIN whales around Namibia and the southern Benguela off W. SA as we kept bumping into them... but it's turned into a useful piece of science!

Prior to 2007 (Trevor Branch et al's global review of all blue whale sightings)...there were only TWO sightings of Blue whales off southern Africa (post whaling) . There have been a lot more since then - indicating that population recovery is under way. lets hope it keeps going and we see more of these amazing animals (preferably alive and at sea!)..

Dyer Island Conservation Trust .radford

07/07/2026

Applications Now Open: Applied Bioacoustics Course Kruger October 2026

We are heading back to Kruger National Park this October for our second Applied Bioacoustics course of the year with OTS!

Dates: 4–17 October 2026

Over the past two years, we have already trained over two dozen participants from 10+ countries, including students, professors, industry professionals, rangers, and managers. This course is built for anyone looking to level up their bioacoustic skills or introduce passive acoustic monitoring to their work.

What you will gain:

-Hands-on field recording skills and signal processing
-Practical training in audio editing and annotation
-Species classification techniques with real-world conservation applications and more

Applications are officially open for both local and international applications - with partial scholarships available. Please visit tropicalstudies.org/course/applied-bioacoustics/

If you have any questions, please drop us a direct message or email [email protected].