A beautiful morning for the Augusta Blessing of the Fleet 2018 and the life-size Southern Right Whales greeted the arrivals to the Augusta Boat Harbour. Coffee, cake and a lot of fun was had during the morning festivities and it wasn’t long before we were off to see the whales on our morning departure. A tall blow straight ahead caught our attention and as we approached a sleepy juvenile surfaced. Seeming interested towards us he disappeared and as we waited patiently for his return a loud exhalation could be heard not far away and sure enough this cheeky whale was right underneath our bow coming up to say hello to everyone!
The afternoon was calm and as we moved out into Flinders Bay we could see Australasian Gannets scouring the oceans surface for a meal of fish. Focusing on a pod of three individuals, the approach of two Humpbacks racing towards us caught everyone by surprise and they dived below the bow only meters away. Moving quickly towards the reef to our right (and the most south western point of our coastline) they stayed close and seemed to be seeking a sound footprint to hide in.
Returning back towards the vessel they seemed to have a bit of traffic each time they moved ahead with two recreational fishing vessels moving past at speed, so back they came to hide in our sound footprint! Their third attempt to continue migrating was also interrupted by a pod of two other Humpbacks moving by and this time one of the individuals in the group decided one large peduncle slap would solve the problem. It certainly did and the second pod moved past and they were now free to continue an afternoon of travel up the coast.
2 thoughts on “Augusta Blessing of the Fleet 2018”
Took my granddaughter out in the morning, words are not enough to express how amazing the tour was! What a wonderful experience! The crew are so welcoming, professional and informative. Their knowledge and understanding of these incredible creatures, enabled us all, just to sit and wait for them to come to us, and boy did they come. Loads of them, they came and checked us out, so close you could nearly reach out and touch them, and my granddaughter thought we even got a wink from one of the very inquistive humpbacks as they gazed right back at us, with our mouths opened wide in awe, of what we experienced. I highly recommend this tour to anyone,don’t think about, do it. You will wish you had done it sooner.
Thank you so much Rachael and it was a pleasure to have you onboard, we are so pleased you were able to spend these special moments with your Granddaughter for memories to last a lifetime