Cape Talk, Thursday night

We're in conversation with Professor Elspen Merlin, who is the chief scientist and manager of the whale unit for the University of Pretoria's Mammal Research Institute. So what we've been seeing in the right whale population over the last 10-15 years or so is that the female whales are thinner than what they used to be 20 years ago. They're calving at a much slower rate. So instead of giving birth every three years, a female right whale now is taking four to five years to give birth to a healthy calf. Lunch with Peffer Hudson every week.