The baby Whales of Western Australia are starting to make their way south on their first ever migration towards Antarctica. This exciting adventure is filled with wonders along the way for these young baby Whales and people watching is one of the fascinating new things they can enjoy! Today a beautiful calf decided to come in for a closer look after having a morning feed from mum. We could hear the loud “whoosh” just to our starboard side and as we looked over he was snuggled up right alongside us, so close we were counting the barnacles all over his little body. Mum was very relaxed and allowed her calf to investigate us at very close quarters as we watched on with much adoration towards this beautiful calf whom was showing much curiosity towards our vessel and everyone onboard.
Now that he had introduced himself it was time to play and this involved some small tail lobs, inverted fluke slapping and even a few pec slaps. Rolling and twisting his body around mum we could see how patient she was with her energetic calf and ever watchful over her little one. One behaviour we noticed was how each time mum would perform a round out dive she would carefully lift her fluke clear of the surface and of course baby Whale would follow and mimic exactly what mum was doing. The only problem is when you are putting on around 50kg of weight per day and roughly 3cm in size your body is not always very well coordinated! The tail dive was almost perfect, just a little wobbly at times for this lovely calf who enjoyed flicking that fluke up high and catching the breeze as he went.
