Whale Watching Perth, WA is always an amazing experience as we see the Perth city skyline and Humpback Whales enjoying the sheltered waters off Perth. A mother Humpback and her calf were resting calm this morning when suddenly mum launched into energetic surface activity as she peduncle slapped and fluke slapped. Looking carefully in her immediate surrounds it wasn’t long before we sighted the reason why for this dominant behaviour… a fast approaching male Humpback. Seeming undeterred by this activity the male continued to move towards the pod while the female still tried to deter his approach with a few more inverted fluke slaps.
A few moments of silence followed before all three surfaced together and we could see the male was now closely following mother and calf, trying his best to keep up with them and show off to the female. Her calf was absolutely gorgeous with snow white pectoral fins glowing below the surface and although common in other Humpback Whale populations around the world when Whale Watching Perth, WA it is not all that common to sight completely white pectoral fin individuals making this calf an exciting and easier to identify addition to the Western Australia Humpback population. Leaving this pod to continue the chase we met a few others also travelling through the area with healthy looking mums and calves all around. Unfortunately, we did not re-sight the entangled calf from Sunday but will continue to look for them throughout this week. Eventually we managed to catch up with the mother and her white pectoral calf on our journey back and by now the male had been accepted into the pod and was acting as a very protective male escort, pleased with his new role as guardian!
