Ahoy to the winter whale season!
What a great start to the Augusta Whale Watching season as well as the Albany Whale Watching season! From great white sharks, rescued entangled whales and close encounters by our inquisitive juvenile humpbacks we have definitely had our hands full!
Naturaliste Charters are so excited to be anchored up in Albany as well as Augusta for this seasons northern whale migration!!! Over the last week we have encountered humpbacks, southern right whales AND blue whales across both of our locations. The number and frequency of blue whale sightings have been phenomenal for this time of year, with four blue whales in Albany and five in Augusta over the long weekend at the whale song festival which signified the commencement of the winter whale season!
We are also so pleased to announce that we encountered our FIRST competition pod of humpback bulls!! With the breeding season in full swing the males have begun their courtship behaviours where we see 8-9 males compete for the attention of one female! This is truly an impressive sight, usually denoted by continuous breaching and other more aggressive manoeuvres such as head lunging and tale swipes galore! Thankfully for us this is only the beginning as we run tours out of Augusta until the end of August as we watch the end of the 45,000 humpback individuals make their way around the Cape Leeuwin lighthouse to head north.
After the most recent storm and huge swells pass by the middle of the week we will be out running tours again where we eagerly await the arrival of our heavily pregnant southern right whales! These incredible animals are much larger than their agile counterparts (the humpbacks) and can therefore calve in the cooler waters of the southwest corner for ALL our customers to encounter. Would you believe that southern right whales give birth to young that weigh up to one tonne, where they then inhabit the shallow, protected waters right alongside the coastline!
Be sure to stay posted for the movements and activity of all THREE whale species that we readily sight on our southwest tours!!! Bring on next week!
