The Southern Humpback Whale Migration WA is sighted every year without fail as the largest population of Humpback Whales known in the world traverse our Western Australian coastline in grand numbers. The tall blow of a large adult whale rocketed skyward and it wasn’t long until we arrived in the location and watched patiently for the next surfacing. Whoosh, everyone jumped a foot as two adults surfaced right next to us after investigating under our hull for a few minutes and trying their best to hide in our sound footprint as another pod close by moved past the area. Humpbacks main sense is sound which they rely heavily upon and by hiding close to something else that is making a sound, like our motors heartbeat, they then disappear into the sound footprint and can no longer be easily heard by others in the area. Breaching erupted just ahead and we could see the complete opposite of whales trying to keep low profiles and a great example of The Language of the Whales™.
Breaching and pec slapping usually indicates flirty behaviour from our Humpback Whales and although it peaks during the northern Humpback Whale migration WA we often see this type of behaviour whenever there are a few males and females around just like this morning. The very large adult female was accompanied by a younger male Humpback who appeared to be taking every opportunity while he could to escort his girl. Such a large female will often attract the attention of only the most powerful and dominant males, but sometimes these younger males do get lucky and find themselves with the opportunity to escort a female back to Antarctica. Unfortunately, for these males generally the female will already be pregnant after a successful mating earlier on during the northern migration in June/July. Our morning also had another surprise as we sighted a beautiful Southern Right Whale who was cruising towards the coastline and after double checking the ID images from the first two sightings a few days ago we can confirm this is a brand new individual, three special Southern Right Whale sightings just off the coast of Perth so far for season 2018!
