Enjoying the Flinders Bay nursery grounds is wonderful as we head towards August and making this season unique is Sunny Flynn, the Humpback Calf and his mum who continue to rest in the sheltered Flinders Bay. Little Sunny was breaching this morning and it is our first surface activity we have sighted from the young calf. His breaching was small, but he did a better job at a mini tail lob which looked strong as he played next to mum. A relief to see this activity as it is showing he is feeling good about himself and taking time to practice the Language of the Whales™ instead of purely focusing on feeding, sleep and survival. Leeuwi was a young Humpback calf who was also born in Flinders Bay two years ago and we can clearly remember watching his first surface activity as he breached around our vessel. Continuing to learn from these mother and calf pods who are located much further south than the usual Humpback nursery grounds will be very important as we go forward.
Sunny finished his practice and play, all that hard work resulted in a well deserved feed of 48% fat milk from mum so we left him to enjoy his breakfast! The Southern Right Whale mother and calves were also enjoying the sheltered conditions this morning as we excitedly counted four mother/calf pods along the nursery ground and two young adults also playfully rolling and spy hopping in the shallows. One of the individuals was showing slight courtship behaviour as she turned her belly to the sky each time the second adult rolled towards her, a sign she was not interested in mating. August must be just around the corner as we enjoy sighting numerous Southern Rights and the season begins to get underway. Our journey back to port one of our guests onboard made a great sighting of flying Dolphins! The local Bottlenose Dolphins including the young calf were porpoising towards us and raced alongside our vessel in a very playful mood, they must have just finished their morning brunch.
