Blues skies and a summer breeze was abundant today as we made our way out to the sighting grounds. Our first sighting was a mother and calf pod with a big male escort, as we were heading out a huge breach and pec slap from mum gave them away as we slowly came into the area. This pod was very curious as the mother came right around our boat with her calf checking out our pod members. We had another pod close by but they didn’t want much interaction with this pod of three so we were the next best thing. The young calf was very excited surfacing very close to our boat as many times as mum would let him which was a lot as mum was also very curious. The male escort seemed pretty relax and didn’t show us much dominate behaviour, with one soft tail slap as he moved off with mum and calf our local bottlenose dolphins came in to see what was going on.
They didn’t waste much time socialising as we had a huge bait ball of fish they were headed to along with the crested terns and gannets. After a few more circles around our boat our beautiful trio decided to move off towards another pod hoping for some whale we had to go get ready for our second tour. New tour and new whales as we headed out again in the afternoon. We sighted our first mum and calf pod not fare from where we left them this morning, this pod was a very chilled and relaxed mother and calf just taking it easy while listing out for any whales near by. After a little while a small plume of white water got our attention so we went over to see what the surface activity was for.
Yet another mother and calf and this time our calf had a little bit to say with a few small breaches and tail lobs. This little ones mother had the most beautiful tail dive and it looks like the calf agrees with copying its mother with a double tail dive by mum and calf, very special. Our calves watch and copy everything mum does as she teaches her calf the language of the whales. We spent some time hanging out with this lovely pod with the calf playing amongst its self with a few tail lobs and spy hops. As we approached the end of our tour we said one last surfacing goodbye to this sweet mum and calf and headed back to port. We will look forward to tomorrow to see who is around this time.
