Meet Squiggles the Humpback Whale, a very special little yearling who has been hanging out in the waters off Perth for the last couple of days. Normally we do not name every Humpback Whale we identify on each tour as with over 45,000 Humpback Whales estimated to be in the Western Australia population, that is a lot of names! Over the last two days however we have met one young whale who has been meandering and enjoying some time exploring in the sighting grounds. It is the same yearling who was observed yesterday actively chasing schools of pilchards and with many pilchards still around today Squiggles was busy moving around those as well.
The shuffling movement had our logging of this whales movements looking like a squiggly line and that is the inspiration for this little ones nickname. Normally the visiting Humpback Whales will stay for less than 24 hours in the sighting ground but now that Squiggles has settled in for the last two days we are very interested to see if this special yearling will be hanging around for a little while longer. It was a busy day out on the water as Humpback Whales moved through steadily and did a good job of dodging plenty of recreational boat activity, the whales always amaze us with their patience and calm decision making when faced with a perfect Sunday weather forecast that brings out many vessels to the migration path.
