A beautiful morning greeted us with blue skies, calm sea and a gentle warm breeze sending us on our way to the Humpback Whale sighting grounds. A small ripple on the waters surface quickly gave way to a large exhalation as a female Humpback and her calf surfaced to breathe in unison. They were quickly followed by another mother and her calf right alongside them, we had a very special mother/calf pod of four travelling along the coast. The memory a female Humpback has of her migratory route is phenomenal and she will pass this knowledge down to her calf with each new resting ground they visit. The resting ground may be a new place of discovery for the calf but the females have been visiting our coastline just off Perth for many, many years. A few moments after joining them we heard a commotion just to our right as we looked over to see a calf breaching along with his mum a few hundred meters away. Perhaps they had been feeding and resting quietly when the pod we had joined disturbed their little area… the breaching certainly created a large splash!
The response from our pod was of much curiosity as the calves shuffled in front of their mums to get a better look and listen to the pod not far away. After a few breaches the second pod continued with their morning and retained their reactionary distance from the busy pod of four travelling alongside us. We made our way over to say a quick hello and capture a few identification images of the female and her calf who continued to rest quietly, only being by themselves they were not too interested in socialising with the other pod a bit further away. Wishing them well we continued to travel with our curious pod of four who were enjoying their morning travelling on the Humpback Highway. A long journey ahead will not deter these two females as they are on the cusp of completing an almost six month long migration and round trip of 13,000 kilometres all without feeding. Their calves both looked healthy and strong with one of the calves having a beautiful white belly and we decided to name her in memory of a special person with a very beautiful name… Charlotte.
