Rottnest Island whale watching was in full swing over both of our tours today. A brisk spring easterly followed us out into the sighting grounds this morning as our first pod of Rottnest Whales were sighted showing off to the other pods nearby with pec slaps. As the tension built our flirty pec slapping female started a competition pod with the surrounding boys chasing her around trying to win her approval to escort her down the coastline. While one of the males started to ramp it up with a few big chin slaps showing his dominance to the others.
They were competing for our whole tour leaving us no choice but to leave them to it and may the best male Humpback win! As the easterly winds eased for our afternoon so did the competing energy of the whales, leaving us with a pod of three bachelor whales coming over to us to see what we were up to. These curious boys swam around our vessel while spy hopping on the bow to check out our lovely guests onboard.
These boys seemed to have been travelling together for a while as they were very content with each pod member, dancing around each other while dancing around us as well. We really did Join The Pod with these three beautiful and gentle male Humpbacks. We would have loved to spend all afternoon with these three Humpbacks but had to make our way back to Sardine Jetty and as we did one of the boys launched out into a playful goodbye breach, with a black belly and unique markings we will add him to our ID catalog to hopefully re-sight him in the future. Another highlight this afternoon was a surprise visit from a Great White Shark who was on patrol near the area we observed two enormous body lunges from a pod of Humpback Whales with an oil slick left behind. We did wonder if it was this predator that had caused the commotion and slick, thankfully our whales are tuff and can handle these sharks with some dominant surface language to clear out the area.
