Augusta School holiday whale watching was enjoyed today as the first weekend of the winter holidays unfolded with spectacular breaching, hectic competition pods and cruising escort pods. It was a lovely winters morning as amongst the cloud cover and still conditions dozens of Humpback Whale pods were on the move. Departing the Augusta Boat Harbour we could spot our first pod for the morning immediately as two enormous adults cruised towards the harbour entrance. Hugging the coastline carefully they maintained a great distance away from the other pods and minimised the risk of bumping into high energy bachelor males. It worked perfectly as they silently moved out towards the reef line as we wished them well before joining with our secondary pod for the morning.
It was a commotion of white water and trumpeting as a total of eight Humpback Whales converged and the energy levels shot up as they raced around us with much excitement. Amongst all the commotion we had the one female finding herself being followed by a further two bachelor males along with her protective male escort.The other challengers decided this was too much intensity for them and peeled away leaving the remaining three boys to fight it out. One male had an enormous scratch right down his side from a previous competition pod he would have been involved in, we suspected he would gain a few more scars throughout the day! The chase was on as the female pushed out towards the reef line and the high energy pod eventually found themselves at the exit point of the bay with a fellow two bachelor males having now joined.
Wishing them well we moved out to our third pod as a darling and very tiny yearling was startled by two large adults travelling in an escort pod moved by close to him. He launched into huge head lunging and breaching, a very dramatic reaction and spectacular to watch. Eventually the youngster settled and decided to come over and check us out curiously before investigating the reef line. Our final pod for this busy morning was two big adults who followed a couple of big head lunges with powerful fluke slapping which indicated there may have been possible shark activity in the area, but that surface language did a good job of clearing the bay around them. A wonderful day out with the whales and fantastic to welcome Jackie onboard for her sixth tour with us! Thankyou so much Jackie for all your support in reading the Daily Whale and following our journeys each day, we love your passion and enthusiasm for the whales and cannot wait to welcome you back onboard again very soon.
