Sport of Kings

Humpback calves were jumping for joy today as it was the day for the Sport of Kings and an incredible morning observing three Humpback calves breaching just meters off our bow! Our morning began rather mysteriously as sunshine and clouds both couldn’t make up their mind to what type of day it would be and as we watched in the overcast shadows two mothers and calves surfaced close by. One female was younger and rather energetic as she cruised along with her calf and travelled towards a much larger female who was sleeping quietly. The younger female announced her arrival into the area with an enormous peduncle slap and it was only then that the more mature female who was almost twice the size of her younger counterpart seemed to wake from her slumber to slowly meander away from this energetic mum. The younger female happily continued on her way through the area and looked like she was in a rush to watch the Sport of Kings, the race that stops a nation and migration.

The Language of the Whales™ was in full swing as we approached three separate pods of mothers with calves communicating back and forth with breaching, pec slaps and tail lobs going off everywhere as the calves chit chatted to each other. One of the calves was completely jet black from fluke to rostrum and as he continued to breach towards us and was completely airborne we wondered if he was going to stop! “Whoosh” right alongside us as we looked to our right and there was a little calf surfacing trying to hide in our sound footprint to make a sneaky approach towards the breaching calf, but to no avail as the little one spied him a bolted over at full speed. The excitement levels were very high and the calf who was most excited of all was our little black beauty who seemed so pleased to show off his amazing breaching to his new friend he almost landed right on top of him.. oops!

The third calf finally approached and was a little bit cautious at first, startling from some white water landing on her back from one of the other calves breaches she took off before performing tail lob of her own. This seemed to get rid of the nerves and all three calves continued to roll and play together as the sun came out and the mums carefully watched over their playful calves. A true privilege to have Humpback calves playing right next to us with so much trust towards us and trust of their environment The all black calf left a big impression on us with his enthusiasm and great beauty so we decided to name him in honour of a champion we lost today… The Cliffsofmoher

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