Whale Watching from Hillarys today as over a dozen Humpback Whales communicated The Language of the Whales in spectacular fashion! Our first encounters during our morning were with peaceful mothers and calves who were gently resting in the sighting grounds. The females are often exhausted this time of year, but the calves are happily consuming large quantities of milk which results in curious behaviour to pass the time. As mother Humpback calmly rested, her little calf would pop up to have a look at us before swimming back down to mum and enjoying a feed of milk. We gently departed to allow them to continue their important resting and sighted some activity starting up on the horizon.
Arriving, we sighted powerful peduncle lobs as many separate pods of Humpbacks scattered. The energy was high as each pod had something to say, some dominant peduncle lobbing to our right while attention seeking pec slapping began to our left. It was amazing to watch and felt a little bit like a tennis match as we twisted our heads left and right! During our journey back to port we noticed some fluke slapping and slowed down to investigate. Arriving, we were concerned to notice a small amount of rope hanging over the peduncle of this whale. He was using powerful fluke slapping to try and rid himself of this slight entanglement and after a few minutes, and to our great relief, he was able to successfully free himself. Almost as if nothing had happened, he then returned back to his surface activity and now had a friend who had protectively approached and joined with him. A fascinating day whale watching from Hillarys with a very happy ending and self managed disentanglement from this smart and poised Humpback Whale.
