Breaching whales off Fremantle today as we had a bouncy new member of the population launched into powerful breaches before the adults took over on the midday tour to show how its done. It was a beautiful day with blue skies, a calm sea and refreshing cool breeze ruffling across the waters surface. Our first observation were enormous head lunges which then turned into pec slapping by mum as her calf joined in with breaching. White water was flying as these two lit up the sighting grounds with the Language of the Whales as mother whale encouraged her calf to call out and attract attention towards themselves. It made us think there may have been a pesky shark lingering nearby as the mother whale was unsettle and trying to call in more whales for support and to maintain a watchful eye out for these predators. She started to settle and we decided to join a nearby escort pod who were cruising towards Rottnest Island wth beautiful tail dives. A few cheeky trumpets and close approaches saw these two excited to meet us as we cruised as one and enjoyed the company of these remarkable whales this morning.
The midday tour sighted a ruffling of afternoon breeze as the adult Humpback Whales took on the communication opportunities that presented themselves as multiple pod converged. Firstly, it was two escort pods having a conversation with endless tail lobs and inverted fluke slapping as they cleared out the area between themselves and maintained a reactionary distance. A younger whale popped in to say hello before moving on as things got heated between the two escort pods and the tail lob intensity increased. Eventually they moved far enough away from each other that they settled back down for rest time as yet more pods moved in a little way ahead of us and we decided to see what they were getting up to this afternoon. A female launched into spectacular breaching, over and over she gracefully flew skywards before crashing back down. Following up with beautiful pec slapping she had everyone’s attention and it was an award winning Language of the Whales performance from this very special Humpback Whale. Breaching whales off Fremantle had us all smiling today as we enjoyed and appreciated this show of energy so late in the migration for these adults.
