Whale Watching off the Southern coast of Gabon

The sea is teeming with life off the coast of Gabon. Dolphins frolic close to shore, sea turtles lay their eggs on the beaches from December to March, and humpback whales give birth and mate off the coast from June to September. The last weekend in August we had the immense pleasure to be invited to be go whale watching with Daniel on his boat.

Teun left on Saturday morning with Daniel and few others to try their luck at fishing and then camping on the beach. Unsure of how my body was going to take to the potentially very choppy water, I decided to not go for the full two days on the boat, but instead left on Sunday morning with a few other to meet them.

Apparently Teun and the rest of the first group spent the whole afternoon on Saturday trolling to no avail (saw loads of whales though, from what I heard it was actually pretty comical how many whales there were, like oh look another whale…), so unfortunately after landing on the beach they set up camp and went to bed without a fish feast that evening. 20150830-IMGP6652whales However, the next morning on their way back to pick us up Teun and Angus both got bites on their lines in quick succession. And after the battle to end all battles (I believe there was blood, sweat and tears shed) Teun pulled in a massive rouge! (African red snapper I believe). As you can imagine, when Teun came onto shore to meet us he was beaming with pride as he displayed his mighty catch.

 

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After a change of crew we set off for the open seas. We had a nice ride down the river for about 15 minutes as Daniel joyfully explained the dangers of exiting the river mouth and how to navigate through the breaking surf to get out to the ocean without capsizing the boat and potentially drowning us all. As we neared the breaking waves we were instructed to hold on and we all braced ourselves for some serious rocking, but hopefully not rolling. 20150830-IMGP6683whalesHe navigated out into the calmer waters with ease and we began our search for whales.It didn’t take too long before a splash in the water was spotted and soon we were within meters of a small pod of humpback whales! It was really amazing being so close to such huge and majestic animals. 20150830-IMGP6665whalesOne was particularly curious about us and popped up what seemed like right next to the boat and twisted its massive body around on the surface to get a good look at us. 20150830-IMGP6671whales

For the next couple of hours we enjoyed the peaceful surrounding of the sea and the gentle lull of the waves as we searched and found several more whales. We were also joined by a group of dolphins for a bit, they had fun swimming in our wake and we clicked away trying to get decent photos of them.

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For the most part the whales were pretty lazy, just popping up to get some air, with a little bit of tail action here and there, but then we came across one that treated us to a little acrobatics leaping out of the water and landing with a huge splash. It. Was. Awesome!20150830-IMGP6778whales 20150830-IMGP6792whales

But all good things must come to an end. We said our good byes and headed back to shore. 20150830-IMGP6773whales

 

Pink Hippo Sighting

First of all I have to start this blog post with a very random side note. I can not think about the pink hippopotamus I saw without my Dad’s most infamous joke popping into my head. It’s one of those jokes that he loves to tell, but nobody wants to listen to more than once, so if you ever see my Dad be sure to ask him about it, he’ll be over the moon to have a captive ear 😉

Anyways, now onto the actual blog post…the other day (hahaha, actually a couple of months ago, I’m just so terrible at updating this blog that I didn’t get around to posting this yet…whoops) I was at Colas beach to go 20150626-IMGP5784for a walk (as I do quite often) and I wandered down to the lagoon. I started taking some pictures of the beautiful lagoon separated from the ocean by only 10s of feet when I heard a noise. It’s an unmistakable noise if you’ve ever heard it before, the sound of hippos talking (if you’ve never heard it please do yourself a favor and have a listen here, it makes me crack up every time I hear it). I immediately swing back around towards the main lagoon and in the distance in the middle of it I can see them! The ears and nostrils of a few hippopotami are visible just above the water.

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I move around the side of the lagoon and crouch down near some bushes. Slowly I see hippo heads popping in and out of the water. And then I realize that one of the hippos, the largest one that I can see, appears to be pink! Now I’m really fascinated. I sat down and for the next 20 or 30 minutes I just watched the hippos hanging out in the lagoon, moving around a bit and talking to each other. It was really amazing to just sit and watch and listen to them.

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After getting my fill I stood up and started to wander back to the car, but not before spotting a bee-eater watching me from a tree branch over the lagoon. Somebody’s always watching you around here it seems 🙂

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And for any curious minds out there, I did a little research into my pink hippo (why he’s pink) and found out that most likely it’s leucistic. Leucism is a condition where an animal has total or partial loss of pigmentation in the pigment cells (for hard core science nerds, it’s due to a defect during differentiation of the pigment cells or problems during migration from the neural crest to skin, hair, or feathers during development). The difference between leucism and albinism is that albinism only affects the melanin producing cells where leucism can affect all types of pigment producing cells. Leucistic animals don’t have red eyes.