Whale & dolphin research, South Africa

The CDS conducts research on a wide variety of marine animals, from whales through to sea birds. Many of the dedicated research programs are dependant on the number of full time and part time research students. Recently work has been concentrated on dolphins and seals, in particular the bottlenose and humpback dolphin, and the Cape fur seal. Most of this work is concerned with population estimates and population ecology. Research on other species depends on when they visit our bay, e.g. killer whales, southern right whales, humpback whales, etc.

The CDS is called to a number of whale, dolphin, seal and shark strandings throughout the year. We’re always keen for volunteers to join us at strandings. In the past, many volunteers have said that the strandings have been one of the highlights of their stay. On occasion, seabirds in distress are taken to the Plett Seabird Rehabilitation Centre on Vic and Debbie’s farm. At such an event volunteers are given the opportunity to help out.

Volunteers have involved themselves with a number of educational activities in the past, these include; giving talks to local schools, getting kids to join in on beach clean up’s (we had over 200 children at one beach clean up) designing educational worksheets for children of different ages and even designing a range of posters for schools. Work will commence at 8:00. You will either have a day in the field or a day at the office. A field day would include assisting in the collection of research data, either on our research boat out at sea or during one of our land based studies. An office day would consist of sorting, analysing and cataloguing all the data collected out in the field. This would involve sorting and scanning of slides, filing scientific papers, cataloguing video footage or data capture on computer. Our work day ends at 17:00.