Greg Vogt, the charismatic chairman of the MTN Cape Whale Route, argues: "You've got to remember that Southern Rights were hunted to virtual extinction, and they're only slowly making a comeback."Many whale watchers support moves to add whales to the country's "Big Five" top game animals (currently lions, elephants, rhino, leopards and buffalo). One of its officers at Still Bay, Cunny Jones, is worried: "We try our best to protect the whales but if you get idiots going up to them in rubber `ducks' (dinghies) when our backs are turned, there's very little we can do."Southern Right whales were the first of the large whales to be protected in South Africa, in 1935, and conservation bodies are anxious that the 37 species of whales and dolphins found in Southern African waters are not exploited. Transgressors face jail sentences of six years, though the government's Sea Fisheries Office admits that it lacks the manpower to patrol the coastline adequately. Most of the time, however, they loll around on the surface "spouting" (blowing unpleasantly smelly water vapour into the air) and "spy-hopping" (poking their heads out of the water to look around) or, more impressively, "fluking" (lifting their tails into the air before diving).Whereas boat-based whale watching has become highly organised in centres like Kaikoura in New Zealand, South Africa is taking the opposite approach Laws forbid boats from getting within 300 metres of whales.

Few would dispute the claim, least of all between June and January when huge groups (known as "pods") of whales can often be observed swimming only metres away from the shore, and "breaching" spectacularly as they surge up and crash down like thunder into the sea. The body boasts that South Africa possesses "the world's best land-based whale watching". Because of its excellent cliff-top viewing, the town has become the focal point for the MTN Cape Whale Route, a small but influential promotional and educational body launched in February. It has already established dozens of information boards at viewing points - the first established in the sleepy but charming resort of Still Bay - and has set up a Whale Hotline to give hourly updates on where whales can be spotted.