To kick off the second week of school holidays here in Western Australia we have we blessed with fantastic tours! It has been great to see a lot of West Australians travelling to the south west to continue exploring this beautiful state we live in! As a result we have been able to show the locals what is right in their backyard.
With three tours yesterday, morning afternoon and sunset the whales held up all day! The morning tour was greeted with a MEGAPOD of humpbacks moving through the bay. Multiple pods of 5 or so ‘active’ whales and countless breaching on the horizon! This meant that no matter which direction you looked you could see a whale. Fins, flippers and barnacles were being thrown around and lots of white water! These beasts effortlessly sprung themselves out of the water over and over again. Spring was well and truly in the air!
As we had whales breaching in all directions it looked as though they were communicating, and organising themselves to get ready for the final leg of their migration. These whales were long gone by the afternoon but it wasn’t long before we found a new pod of Humpbacks. They were erratic and unpredictable showing typical behaviour of a competition pod! However, the grunting and head lunging coming from these massive whales was still a spectacle to see.
As the sun moved to the west the wind had dropped and there was a shift with the whales too. The competition pod had moved off but a very friendly whale and its buddy were still lagging behind in the bay. This humpback rolled around flopping its giant pectoral flippers onto the surface of the water. Its buddy was very quiet for most of the encounter however it still had to get its time in the spotlight, breaching twice next to the boat! Passengers jaws dropped as this almost 40 ton whale propelled itself skyward! The friendly whale soon picked up its pec slapping again, maybe it had an itch to scratch… Either way it was mesmerising to watch!