Whales of Hermanus

• “Humpback” refers to the habit of raising and curving its back in preparation for the dive, accentuating the pronounced hump in front of the dorsal fin.The humpback whale is a baleen whale and a rorqual whale with a rounded body narrowing to a slender tail. The bulky head and jaws have numerous knobs that contain hair follicles and provide sites for barnacles and whale lice.Humpback Whales are easily distinguished by their wing-like flippers often as long as up to as much as a third of their total body length.

Bryde’s whales are named after a Norwegian, John Bryde, who, in 1912, helped construct the first South African whaling factory in the early 1900s.