Augusta Lighthouse was watching over the Humpback Whales today as they enjoyed the beautiful morning conditions. A dozen Humpback whales were shuffling through the area with three enormous males surfacing alongside us and joining the pod. Travelling in cruise control they approached us to investigate while still keeping the migration rhythm ticking along. Just beautiful to observe their graceful movement as they kept a close eye on the others around them who were also travelling towards the reef line. These big males were travelling in a bachelor pod and we could tell that the escort pods close by most likely contained a few pregnant females as these big males were carefully scanning for any available female Humpbacks to show off their muscles to! Wishing them well we watched as they carefully made their way through the reef line and around the cape with the Augusta Lighthouse guiding the way to the northern breeding grounds.
A ruffling of white on the otherwise calm surface alerted us to a change of pace and a competition pod was underway. Two sleeping whales had been caught off guard by an approaching male and he was most interested in this female. They shuffled, surged and pushed their way around us as the larger male tried his best to maintain his spot next to his female. Thankfully a distraction came at just the right moment as another two large adults approached and captured the focus of the challenging male, just enough time for the primary escort male and his female to slip away unnoticed. Our final encounter for the busy morning was with a beautiful sub adult who had the most lovely fluke and is now a new edition to our Humpback ID catalogue. Sleeping in the shallows he slowly lifted his fluke to show off his pretty white addition to the dorsal side of his fluke, a beautiful young whale who we hope to re-sight again in the near future.
