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Did you know that Algoa Bay is a Whale Heritage Area? South Africa is the only country in the world with three Whale Heritage Areas, with the Bluff in Durban and Plettenberg Bay being the other two.

When it comes to biodiversity, Algoa Bay is arguably one of the most outstanding marine environments. During the winter months, the warm shallow waters of its unique half-heart-shaped bay provide ideal conditions for Southern right whales to mate and have their calves.

Later in the year, the bay also serves as a nursery for humpback whale calves before they make the long journey back south to their feeding grounds.

Bryde’s and minke whales are in the bay all year, feeding on sardines and anchovies that are rounded up by long-beaked common dolphins or African penguins.

Algoa Bay is home to the largest colony of African penguins in the world. The foraging activities of these wonderful birds provide feeding opportunities for dolphins and whales all year round.

In 2016, Algoa Bay was named the ‘Bottlenose Dolphin Capital of the World’ for having the largest pods and most frequent sightings. It is not uncommon to come across a pod of over six hundred Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins in Algoa Bay and, in the shallower areas of the bay, there are also frequent sightings of rare Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, often with new-born calves, which suggests that this species is calving here. Common dolphins can be seen in the bay literally in their hundreds, if not thousands.

@Raggy Charters

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Did you know that a fossil of the Nqwebasaurus was discovered near Kirkwood?

Nqwebasaurus thwazi is the first Xhosa-named dinosaur. It was a turkey-sized coelursaurian theropod from the Early Cretaceous period (159 – 132 million years ago). A lightly built fast-running predator with hollow bones and a large brain, it swallowed small stones to help grind food in its stomach, much like the gizzards of modern birds. Its name means “fast running messenger lizard from Nqweba”.

Currently it is the oldest coelurosaur in Africa and shows that basal coelurosaurian dinosaurs inhabited Gondwana 50 million years earlier than previously thought. This is the oldest known dinosaur from the family that includes T.Rex to be found on one of the continents that once made up Gondwana. This little hunter, who probably ate bugs and lizards, was the great grandfather of many larger predators.

Nqwebasaurus is considered to have been a small to medium-sized coelurosaur. The type specimen is approximately 30 cm high and is estimated to have been 90 cm long.

Nqwebasaurus was first discovered by William J. de Klerk and Callum Ross in July 1996 during a joint expedition led by the Albany Museum in Grahamstown and Stony Brook in New York, United States, where Callum Ross was affiliated at the time. The fossil is remarkably complete and is considered an extremely rare find as no coelurosaur fossils had previously been found in Africa at this time. No new Nqwebasaurus fossils have been discovered since. It means Kirky, as it is known, is the only fossil representing its species and it is currently not possible to compare the fossil with another member of its species.

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The Addo Elephant National Park was established 94 years ago to protect the last 11 elephants in the Eastern Cape region. Since then, the reserve has expanded to 155,000 hectares and today it’s home to lions, leopards, rhino, buffalo and more than 600 elephants. It also has 16 rivers and 437 wetlands.

Freshwater scientists Nancy Job and Dirk Roux were part of a team that co-authored the South African National Parks and South African National Biodiversity Institute’s first-ever inventory of the park’s rivers and wetlands. With an inventory in place, the park is better placed to conserve wetlands for South Africa and plan for the future.

A wetland is a piece of land that is flooded with salt or fresh water most of the time. Addo’s wetlands include wetlands in low-lying hollows which collect water between coastal dunes, springs hidden within forested kloofs and depression wetlands (shallow, bowl-like ponds that hold water for only a few months in the year) inside areas of thick, bushy vegetation.

Read more about Addo’s wetlands, why they are important and the plans to conserve them.

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If you have ever wondered where Donkrag Dam in the Addo Elephant National Park got its name from, scoot closer and listen up.

The Domkrag Dam is named after a giant 45-year-old 60kg mountain tortoise which once roamed the park. “Domkrag” is the Afrikaans word for a “jack” (the thing you lift cars with), and this tortoise had a peculiar habit of walking underneath cars and trying to lift them up with enormous strength.

Domkrag came to a sad end when he fell into an aardvark hole and couldn’t get himself out. His shell is still on display in the Interpretive Centre.

– Mountain or Leopard Tortoise – The genus name Stigmochelys is a combination of the Greek words stigma meaning ‘marked’ and chelone meaning ‘tortoise’. The specific epithet pardalis is derived from the Greek word pardos meaning ‘spotted’, after the spotted shell.

This tortoise is the largest tortoise species in Southern Africa and is a grazing species that favours semiarid, thorny to grassland habitats. In both very hot and very cold weather, it may dwell in abandoned fox, jackal, or aardvark burrows. The leopard tortoise does not dig other than to make nests in which to lay eggs. Given its propensity for grassland habitats, it grazes extensively upon mixed grasses. It also favours succulents and thistles.

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