Perth Humpback calf sightings are busy in late October as the last wave of the southern migration arrives with many mums, calves and even a couple of escort males around today. It was yet another beautiful morning and the warmth over the last few days is certainly making summertime feel much closer. The morning observed a few pods resting quietly before one mother launched powerfully into full body breaching and her calf very quickly followed. It was spontaneous and reactive, we suspected that a shark may have been the potential cause for the reaction. Arriving to the scene we could see that mum had begun to relax again and instead her calf took the opportunity to practice some breaching and head lunging.
It was beautiful to watch and this little one was only very small and likely much younger than a few of the other calves around today. The midday tour enjoyed the same picture perfect weather as our first pod was moving toward the Port of Fremantle in search of a quiet spot to rest away from the others. Moving further out into the sighting grounds we were very happy to see an escort pod moving past on our port side and surfacing very close as they used our sound footprint to make a sneaky approach towards the mum, calf and male escort just to our starboard side. It was amazing to watch on as these two pods outmanoeuvred each other politely with the escort pod keeping to themselves and the enormous escort male of the mum and calf was pleased about the fact he didn’t need to defend against this male. The local Bottlenose Dolphins were also hanging around the sighting grounds this afternoon and it was great to see them enjoying their day as much as we were!
