The Way of the Whales greeted us early today as another Mother and Calf surfaced close in by the tankers in Gage Roads, as discussed they utilise this area to stay in the tankers sound footprint which enables them to hide from predation or other male Humpbacks looking for females, not that the males want to harm the calf but the calf can get separated from Mum and this is when we tragically find perfectly healthy calves washed up on the beach as they have lost contact with Mum. Searching further out we soon came across numerous Mother & Calf Pod’s all demonstrating the Language of the Whales as multiple pods closed into each other’s area, surface action showed not everyone was in the socialising mood. As we get further into the tail end of the southern migration all adults are now starting to feel the hunger pinch and looking to get their calves to the feeding grounds in Antarctica for a well deserved feed of scrumptious Antarctic Krill.
Later in the tour we noticed a Mother get very active with head lunges and breaches and on closer inspection had probably been disturbed by a passing pod which was evading a Bachelor Pod, exactly what the Mum’s are trying to avoid, hence the strong surface language.
Fortunately, the Bachelor Pod’s had already had their attention on an older female that was testing their breath holding capabilities with very long downtimes recorded, at last glance Mum was outlasting the boys as she had by far the longer breath hold and the experience to know that she didn’t need to swim madly about the ocean when all she had to do was out last the breath hold capabilities of the younger males. Very intellectual beings our Western Australian Humpbacks but then again this is the way of the Whales the world over.
