Whale watching off Cape Leeuwin today as we were greeted by a clear crisp morning heading out into Flinders Bay on the look out for our much loved Humpbacks. During August we will start to see a slight change in the migration pattern where we used to observe big competition pods and numerous blows filling the bay, now we are starting to see resting escort pods soaking up the warm sun and some very focused humpbacks wanting nothing more than to keep their head down and migrate up the coast to warmer waters. Like always though it takes just one Humpback to start the Language Of The Whales™️ Incredible full body breathes as Gemma our cetacean behaviourist called out “port side breach!” through our live commentary. This gorgeous creature breached from the dark blue waters off Cape Leeuwin landing with the spectacular white water surrounding him followed by full head lunges! Regardless how many times we get the privilege to witness this behaviour we are always so thrilled amazed along with our Pod Members.
After such an incredible sight Grace our drone researcher from The Fat Whales Project, didn’t hesitate to launch the drone over to our head lunging humpback, you would think Grace would love nothing more than to have footage of a surface active humpback but in fact the research she is conducting needs the whale to be as flat and straight on the surface as possible to then get his/her size measured and added to the catalogue.
After this humpback whale started his conversation we saw white water on the horizon indicating more whales communicating with this very outspoken whale. We continued to wait and watch this active whale as he started to get a real rhythm going with a few minutes down time and then launching into one breach and two head lunges, he repeated this three times to then slow and regroup his energy. Thinking he was ready for a little rest we started to turn and get ready to head back to the coast when suddenly he greeted our Pod Members onboard with a huge exhale meters from our bow! Huge smiles grew from our delighted guests and myself as he swam around our vessel to observe who we were and was probably wondering why we weren’t breaching with him.
Every time we endeavour to build a relationship with our whales, it is then you get the true Whale Watch. Vessel behaviour around all Cetaceans should be respectful and time allotted with them came quickly so until tomorrow when we hope once more to catch up with our best friends Whale watching off Cape Leeuwin.
