Safari - Swakomund - Seal & Dolphin Cruise



Picked up at 8am bright and early for about an hour drive north to the marina. There are lots of different cruises going out in the morning, so we wait our turn in line. Only one dock so each company has to take turns. We have our safety discussion and a sumary of the mornings events and then we all find a place on the boat to park our butts so we can hopefully get great photos. We head out into the bay among other fishing boats and cruise boats and booze cruises. Speaking of booze cruises, cups of sherry are passed out within 15 minutes we are on the water. I assume it helps prevent motion sickness...or maybe Namibians just assume all tourists are drunks, not sure. We are maybe 100 meters out when we get an unexpected surprise: humpback whale! I got some photos but nothing really good. Its hard to estimate where they are coming back up once they are spotted the first time and even if you get a shot its generally just of a dorsal fin or fluke or more often than not: the big splash as they disappear. We ended up seeing two whales before we saw our first dolphin. That dolphin surfaced twice then disappeared without a trace. I saw it but no photos. According to our guide it was the smallest species of dolphin called (look up). Seals on the other hand were plentiful. We cruised right past Cape Cross so there were millions of seals on the shore and in the water and doing flips right by our boat. I could have watched them for hours.

We also spent some time around one of the huge drilling platforms. Its out there in the water and a bunch of boats that support the platform were parked nearby. They were all empty though, apparently they only work the platform when the price of oil goes up. When that happens, a bunch of workers come down from Angola and work the platform until the price goes back down.
One other surprising thing we saw were the oyster farms. The water in the this particiular bay is very very rich in plankton and oysters grow super fast here. The oysters aren’t indigineous to Namibia so the original oysters were brought from other parts of the world. They are kept in baskets attached to ropes and every couple of weeks, they are hauled to shore to cleaned properly, then put back in the baskets. These oyster farms produce millions of oysters a month in this process.








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