Port Elizabeth’s Algoa Bay is an epicentre for research on dolphins and whales, with a group of international PhD students studying these marine mammals through the Department of Oceanography at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. Supervising their research is dolphin and whale (cetacean) specialist Dr Stephanie Plön. "When we go to sea, we frequently have four or five sightings a day and because of the larger groups of bottlenose and common dolphins in Algoa Bay, we can see groups ranging from 10 to 500 bottlenose dolphins to even larger groups of common dolphins often associated with bait balls or large schools of sardines or red eyes (part of the herring family). Sometimes these bait balls are a kilometre in diameter," she explains. "It’s crazy; the water is literally boiling with dolphins and gannets. It’s like a mini sardine run, with a feeding frenzy all around you, and among all this you’re trying to observe and photograph the dolphins, because we need to identify individ...
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