Tag Archives: University of Cape Town

Cape Town city centre to change dramatically, will benefit tourism!

Convention Centre 3A number of multi-million Rand projects are underway to change the face of Cape Town in the next few years, reports The Times.   They will also have a positive effect on tourism.

One of the biggest tourism income generators is the expansion of the Cape Town International Convention Centre, which is set to double in size, currently earning the City R400 million per annum.  Expanding the Convention Centre will allow Cape Town to bid for the Heart Congress, for example, the world’s largest conference, as well as to host the annual Tourism Indaba, which would meet the Convention Centre’s goal of Continue reading →

UCT College of Music Sweet Service and Café des Arts Sour Service Awards!

The Sweet Service Award goes to the University of Cape Town College of Music, for its fantastic performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on Monday evening, and for finding concert-goer Bettie Coetzee Lambrecht’s purse which she had forgotten at the ticket table in the foyer of the City Hall.  Receiving details of Gillian Lindner of the College of Music when she discovered her loss at a restaurant after the concert, Bettie called Ms Lindner the following day, and could claim the purse as hers on the basis of its description.  She Facebooked: ‘Last time this happened was a decade ago in New York. Cape Town, I LOVE you as much as NY!’

The Sour Service Award goes to Café des Arts in Franschhoek, which started an sms smear campaign against a competitor restaurant/deli in Franschhoek.  Sacred Ground employed a baker previously working at Café des Arts, whereupon Café des Arts sent text messages to Franschhoek locals, requesting them to not support Sacred Ground! Staff moving between restaurants and other hospitality establishments is a natural occurrence, and is especially pronounced in Franschhoek.

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog.  Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at info@whalecottage.com.   Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog, and in the WhaleTales newsletters on the www.whalecottage.com website.

African Penguins climb up endangered list

The African Penguin is officially on the endangered bird species list, and could become extinct, reports the Cape Argus.  It is the first time that this penguin type, which is an icon for the Simonstown beaches in particular, has been flagged as being more likely to become extinct, as defined by BirdLife International, which compiles the list for the World Conservation Union.

Population figures for the African Penguin have shown a rapid decline, and it is speculated that it is due to changes in commercial fishing and “shifts in prey populations”, says the report.   The University of Cape Town’s Animal Demography Unit is studying the African Penguin, and is concerned about the steady decline in penguin numbers.  The unit is unable to define the exact reason for the decline, and therefore no conservation action can be taken to reverse the trend.   What the Unit has identified however is that the location of the African Penguin breeding colonies is not aligned to where they can get to fish within a 20 km radius.   The change in fish location may be due to climate change.

All in all, the future of the African Penguin does not look promising.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com

Whale of a study on humpbacks

The largest genetic study of humpback whales in the southern hemisphere has been conducted, reports Science Daily.

 DNA samples of 1 500 whales were analysed, and the results have been published in PLoS ONE, an interactive open-access journal for scientific and medical research.   South African researchers at Marine  and Coastal Management and the  Universities of Pretoria and Cape Town, as well as contributors from the Wildlife Conservation Society, The American Museum of Natural History, and researchers from Brazil, France, Oman and Gabon participated in the study.

Humpback whales have been studied in depth in the northern hemisphere, but little was previously known about those in the southern oceans.

The study found that humpback whales had been found to move between oceans, the first such recording, especially along the two oceans around Africa.   The songs of these humpback whales in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans were found to be similar, probably indicating that they connect in the Antarctic.  The humpback whales in the northern Indian Ocean and Arabian peninsula are far less likely to migrate, and only number 200.

A study conducted by the Cascadia Research Collective in the USA found that humpback whales travelled up to 8 300 km to Costa Rica from the Antarctic, in 161 days.   This is the longest ever humpback whale migration recorded.  The study also found that whale spent their winter in waters of between 21 – 28 C.

For more information about the humpback whale research, click here.

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio : www.whalecottage.com