- Title: SOUTH AFRICA: VISITING SOUTHERN RIGHT WHALES
- Date: 28th September 1997
- Summary: HERMANUS, SOUTH AFRICA (SEPTEMBER 28, 1997) (RTV) 1. SLV PEOPLE LOOKING OUT ACROSS BAY 0.06 2. GV BAY PAN RIGHT PEOPLE SITTING ON ROCKS 0.14 3. SCU PEOPLE LOOKING ACROSS BAY WITH CAMERAS AND BINOCULARS 0.18 4. SLV COUPLE SITTING ON ROCKS AS SOUTHERN RIGHT WHALE LEAPS IN BAY BEHIND THEM 0.24 5. MV WOMAN SITTI
- Embargoed: 13th October 1997 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: HERMANUS, SOUTH AFRICA
- City:
- Country: South Africa
- Topics:
- Reuters ID: LVA7185WT0XE8ML0YQYSYRWBQ8YX
- Aspect Ratio:
- Story Text: - INTRO: Residents and tourists along South Africa's Cape coast have been gazing out to sea this week, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Southern Right Whales who visit each year.
Every spring, the South African village of Hermanus, tucked between the sea and verdant mountains, rings with the sound of a kelp horn welcoming the whales which come to mate and calve in the safe sanctuary of the bay.
The Southern Right Whales, which were hunted to the brink of extinction in the first half of the century, draw thousands of tourists every year, who watch the gracefulleviathans leaping in clear water at the base of the low cliffs.
This year a British town crier, Maurice Jones from Topsham, alerted the visitors to the whales' presence.
The numbers of the migrant South African whale population have grown from 2,000 to about 2,300 over the past three years.
That could be between one half and a third of the surviving world population of the Southern Right Whales, so named by 19th Century hunters because they were the best or "right" whales to kill.
Southern Right whales were given international protection in 1937, but the hunting ban was routinely violated until the 1960s.
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