The afternoon meal at Morgan Bay Hotel (Morgans Bay rate payers association, NSRI station 47 Kei Mouth) was a stunning accompaniment to the talk. The audience participated in the talk making it a very lively session. The whales even joined in with breaches and tail slaps that were visible from the balcony. Several bait balls were present in the area and the audience has a wonderful time.
A further interesting point was that another audience member provided us with footage from 1962 of the Durban whaling station which was taken while his parents were on honeymoon. Another audience member had the 1970 LP “Songs of the Humpback Whale” of the recordings of whale songs that Biologist Roger Payne made with Scott McVay. This LP played a key role in igniting the modern environmental movement and helped bring whales back from the brink of extinction.
The SAS Mendi (F148) was on patrol on the Wild coast, and this was the start of seeing her all the way up to Port St Johns. It was the Dutch who made the first laws to protect whales from whaling by foreign vessels in 1787 and 1794 followed by the British in 1795 and 1796. Commodore Blankett, the Naval Commander at the Cape in 1796, even despatched a man-of-war up the south-western coast to take possession of the bays and deny them to the Americans. By February of that year many bays were protected specifically from the Americans. Another proclamation was issued in 1833 forbidding foreign whalers from entering South African bays, but the Americans continued to enter them, well into the 1860’s. The Americans used to Trade with the locals for fresh food and water and supplied guns and gunpowder as a result. This lead to the Governor Napier’s decision in 1841 to occupy Natal, an act which led directly to its annexation in 1843.
Attendance: 75