Bryde's Whale in Table Bay

Last week  (4-10 June) I had been on a trip to Robben Island to spend time on the island as part of a penguin research team.  On our trip to the island I on a very calm day in Table Bay, I could fire off a few shots and capture these pictures of a Bryde's Whale Balaenoptera edeni blowing and surfacing in the bay.

Bryde's Whale in Table Bay

The pictures was uploaded on the Virtual Museum of the ADU as well to form part of the expanding projects of the Animal Demography Unit (ADU) at the University of Cape Town.  The Unit is busy with a project in which the distribution of mammals in Africa is being mapped by citizen scientists submitting photographs of mammals all over the continent and in the surrounding oceans.

The Bryde's Whale is listed as Vulnerable (VU) on the IUCN Red Data List of Mammals.  Therefore the project of the ADU is of utmost importance to map the distribution of this macnificent animal.  The data collected in this way will be used to inform decisions on conservation management to protect the species.
   

Members of the public are invited and encouraged to partake in the projects of the ADU as citizen scientists.  Register as a contributor and then submit photos of a whole host of different species as part of the virtual museum of the ADU.  The details of these projects are available at the link above.