Sea Search

22/10/2026

ANOTHER first for Port and Starboard... two actually. 1) first time seen well offshore and 2) they have new friends?

Currently there are no confirmed records of Port and Starboard more than a couple kilometers from shore, but the boys were sighted by .scholtz on a trip earlier this week some 12 miles offshore of Hout Bay (Cape Town). This is a first for us and it may give us some clues about where they go when they seem to vanish from the coastal waters of the Cape.

During this encounter they were seen displaying hunting behaviour alongside 4-6 other killer whales, something only documented once before (the phenomenal aerial footage by which we wrote up as Towner et al 2022 (and see our youtube for more).

Conditions out there were tough and photos weren't easy to get but we're trying to figure out who these friends are, if they've been photographed before and how they fit into the picture.

Port and Starboard are always full of surprises!

Photos courtesy of .scholtz
orca.man .alisontowner

14/10/2026

Incredible footage of two killer whales attempting to kill a right whale calf in Plettenberg Bay today. Second such predation attempt in a few weeks. Still trying to get ID shots of the killer whales involved. But top notch defense work there by the right whale mum!

12/10/2026

Over the last two weeks, our Killer Whale Team was occupied with training and meetings at the Wits Rural Campus , preparing for our latest venture as key players in the COEXISTENCE project

We are one of two teams in the project, assessing human-wildlife fishery interactions between "black fish" (killer, pilot and false killer whales) and sharks in areas between South Africa and the Mozambique Channel. Our goal is to understand the biology, frequency, and impacts of these interactions throughout the region with the ultimate goal of not only understanding them but also to try and find solutions

This falls under an umbrella project which aims to combine multiple disciplines to provide the groundwork for protected area prioritization and establishment. This is no easy task with many teams, countries, and organizations coming together to look not only at biology but social factors too, meaning tons of logistics and planning

But after a successful trip and with a lot of hard work ahead, our team is set to take on the new challenge and continue producing valuable research!

12/10/2026

26/09/2026

Great video of several humpback whales surface lunging in North Bay in Saldanha Bay this week - an area where we've done a lot of work in the past (but alas not much planned this year). Interestingly - out work has shown very little use of this inner bay by humpbacks over the last ~10 years (historically right whale used to come in here). Also unusual to see such a strong lunge if feeding on krill - so these might be tackling fish which is unusual on the west coast. We have seen Bryde's whale feeding here before on fish (already pretty rare as this is about the northern end of their range limit) .

Not great is that North Bay also hosts a fairly large and loose set of mussel farms - not sure what the current status of these are but this is the one area where the potential overlap of whales and aquaculture is highest along the west coast. All the other aquaculture farms are well inside the Bay where whales rarely visit.

23/09/2026

Our new website is live!

We've been busy tinkering away in the background, working on updating the online home of Sea Search Research and Conservation: www.seasearch.co.za

On the new site you can:
🔬 Explore our research projects, from Cape fur seal health and humpback whale acoustics to killer whales, humpback dolphins and Heaviside's dolphins
👩‍🔬 Meet the scientists and students behind Sea Search
📰 Catch up on our latest news
📚 Browse our peer-reviewed research outputs
💙 Find out how you can support our work or get involved

With plans in the future to add plenty more resources…

Take a look and please let us know what you think! (and if you notice any stray spelling mistakes - those are Simon’s not Sasha’s 😉)

22/09/2026

Popped out to check on the seals and keep our Heaviside's photo ID project ticking over. Two Heaviside's spotted in Hout Bay that we saw in Granger on the 02 Sept! So great to have the confirmation that these animals are moving regularly over this scale (likely both males as these were two of animals involved in our last post of NSFW behavior by dolphins) Also found a small group of duskys in the cleanest bluest water off the Apostles and a seal taking out a GIANT octopus.

Seals looking great too - loads of big fat fatties to use the scientific term. And the biggest of big boys Buffel - lying with a huge donut of empty rock around him. Turns out - if you're really grumpy and kill any smaller seals that come close to you - then eventually they all leave you alone.

Incidentally - this is one of the behavioral cues we look for to identify potentially rabid animals, isolation. Seals have evolved and learned behavioural boundaries that they all 'agree on' to limit excessive injury (like dogs barking, but not biting). Rabid seals are not following these 'rules'. our post doc Rachel Probert is working to quantify these behavioural characteristics as tool for identifying potentially rabid seals in the wild.

photos by Simon Elwen and Kieron Dunn

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/