Perth whale watching was off to a stunning start with soft grey clouds and glassy waters, making it very easy to spot our humpbacks as we entered the sighting grounds. The first spot was a mother and calf taking it easy and resting in the shallows before a big bubble veil came up with a protective male escort exploding to the surface. It didn’t take long until another male also surfaced indicating we had a challenger in the mix.
These two males pushed and shoved each other around as the challenger was trying to win this Mother’s heart but the original escort wasn’t having it, his go to move was the “Bubble Veil” where he exhales air just before he surfaces to make it harder for the challenger to see the female under the water. This went on for a little while until the main escort male decided enough was enough with a big move! He pushed himself into the other male with his whole body before racing back to his female, the challenger had enough and started to swim off towards another pod of whales to try his luck.
The three then started to settle and relax with mum bringing her curious calf right over to us, checking us out a few times then going back to mum. The afternoon weather was absolutely stunning with almost no wind and sunshine starting to peak through the morning clouds. We stopped and spent some time with a mother and calf in the resting grounds close by before heading out a little deeper. We saw multiple blows up further indicating a competition pod was forming, with blow after blow we got closer to see 7-9 whales all getting close to each other trying to win over this female humpback that didn’t have a calf.
One male was showing off his moves with the “Bullfrog” which is when he stretches out his whole body and drips his back with his head out of the water moving along the surface kinda looking like a crocodile. This move was upsetting the other males a little so they started to push and shove each other around as well. The female was playing it safe trying to keep the boys calm with long breath holds and using our boat as a distraction, she stayed close to us and didn’t race off not wanting to rev up the boys to chase after her but to keep then focused on each other more than her.
We have been blessed with more competition pods this late in the season, it’s been amazing to see our whales compete. It is such a fascinating way of competing as well as they don’t compete to the death like other species but the are strategic in their ways. It reminds us of racing cars as they don’t wanna crash they just want to win and be the first across that line, in this case the first one next to the female. It was almost time for us to leave without knowing the winner we wished the boys good luck and the female to handle all those boys, my goodness she has a busy afternoon. We cruised into the harbour after a beautiful day spent out with our competitive humpback.
