Shark! Wait…It’s A Whale
From cellphones to GoPro’s, everyone has a camera with them now-a-days. Pair this with the growing popularity of paddle boarding and you’re going to get some great pictures of wildlife encounters.
Take this recent encounter off the coast of South Africa.
This got people’s excitement level up. A lurking dark figure just below the water’s surface, an exposed dorsal fin and in an area of the world known for its great white shark population.
Shark!
Nope.
It turns outs the 11-foot figure was not a great white shark, as some paddle boarders feared, but a rarely seen pygmy right whale.
The photo of the whale was shared on social media and it caused a buzz. Local researchers where able to catch up to the whale by boat and identified it as as a pygmy right whale and not a great white.
According to Mark Carwardine’s book Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises,right whales are the smallest and least known of the baleen whales and sightings are very rare. Pygmy right whales were thought to be extinct up until 2012.
Sometimes having cameras everywhere pays off. In this case, this rarely seen and studied whale can perhaps give researchers some more insight into its movement and habits.
Thanks paddle boarders!
