The Perth Humpbacks visited Rottnest Island today to take a Quokka Selfie while cruising southbound to Antarctica. The blue waters off Fremantle framed the beautiful Humpback whales as they danced together and flirted with pectoral slapping and belly rolls in the shallow waters. Anyone who has travelled to Rottnest Island has most likely taken the opportunity for a quokka selfie with the famous locals and even our Humpback Whales seemed to be on the lookout as they moved very close when passing by Rottnest Island in search of their obligatory quokka selfie! The pectoral slaps could be heard clearly as each one landed on the surface and it is amazing to watch 1,000 kilograms crash with such ease and grace. A pelican flew past in a surprise sighting and didn’t seem fazed as he had us all staring back at him, who said whale watching was just for humans 🙂
Looking carefully at one of the images we can see relatively fresh wounds starting to heal at the base of one of the Humpback Whales flukes. This type of scarring is generally caused due to entanglement and thankfully there is no sign of rope or line any longer on this whale. Sometimes during their epic migration they will come into contact with cray pots or other type of rope that can became briefly caught on a Humpback Whale. The fortunate ones will find a way to dislodge this entanglement eventually or have a special group of people rescue them, they will always keep the scarring that results from these interactions with rope and it is this scarring which can tell us a bit about their story.
