Juvenile Humpbacks take over Augusta in the afternoon sunshine today as breach after breach lit up Flinders Bay. The stormy weather had past and the wind had completely disappeared creating glassy conditions and shortly after departing the Augusta Boat Harbour the call went out from the stern, breaching just up ahead! Even from a distance we could see that these were young whales and as we arrived all three seperate pods were breaching, pec slapping and tail lobbing one after the other. Staying with the juveniles who first began the communication amongst everyone, they continued on with remarkable pec slapping and full barrel role breaches. Juveniles tend to have more time to spend socialising and interacting with other similarly aged whales as they are not part of the breeding age population. The boys don’t need to compete and the girls don’t need to be chased by the boys, so the energy amongst them all becomes very playful and relaxed.
We were amazed to have front row seats to this spectacular display and the young male continued his barrel role breaching as a pod of two, attracted by all of the surface activity, calmly approached the juveniles. All went very relaxed as they introduced themselves to each other and we took this opportunity to meet with a lone male Humpback who was now head lunging and breaching towards us. Typically cheeky, we knew that this young male was highly likely to continue breaching straight at us and sure enough he did, landing only meters from us before swimming directly underneath. He wasn’t the only show off in the bay as yet another breaching juvenile called out to his mates as the local Bottlenose Dolphins joined us for a perfect end to a perfect Friday afternoon as we enjoyed every moment of the juvenile Humpbacks take over of Augusta.
