Humpback Whale Watching in Augusta as we started our morning venturing out into Flinders Bay and it didn’t take long until we sighted our first Humpback Whale making his journey to the warm waters off our northern coastline. This young teenager was having a nice little snooze which is understandable after swimming over 2,000 miles to get to Augusta, Western Australia. It didn’t take long for the curiosity of our young Humpbacks to kick in and over he swam, completing circles around our vessel for over half an hour just making sure we weren’t another friend to join his pod to keep him company on his journey north. After building a lovely relationship with this young whale we decided to meet some other pods moving past only a few hundred meters away, blow after blow was spotted around us as some white water got our attention. As we got closer to this escort pod we could soon see what was causing all the commotion, a competitor was approaching from behind this escort pod to come and see if he had any chances in stealing this other male Humpback’s female friend.
A chin slap started the fight for this female with a few others joining in as well, to keep his girl the original escort male had to pull out something spectacular. Leaping clear of the ocean below the spectacular breach was superb and made a very large impact which echoed out towards the other whales around. The morale of the competitors soon diminished and they went on their way leaving this escort pod to continue. They will try their luck again when they come across another female on their journey north. To complete our wonderful morning with the whales we followed yet another escort pod towards the reef line. A very unique looking humpback was in this pod with beautiful white markings up his side and a nice little patch of white on his left dorsal fin, this will help to re-sight this young Humpback in the future with our onboard photographer taking ID images during each tour of the whales we meet to further our knowledge and research.
