Whale Watching in WA 2020 has been a unique experience and it is always a joy to be with the whales. The winter patterns provided a wonderful display of different weather today as sunshine, wind and rain scattered through Flinders Bay. The morning whales were relaxed to begin with as they shuffled through the bay and quietly respected each others reactionary distance. The best attempts by these escort pods to keep a low profile is usually enough but not always, as was the case this morning. The male and female travelling in an escort pod had attracted the attention of a bachelor male and a surge of white water developed. The chase was on as they twisted left and right, chasing after each other and barreling towards our bow. It was exciting to witness the agility and speed as these three young whales put on an excellent display of high intensity energy. We watched the competition unfold and it was interesting to observe that the original male escort managed to hold his spot even after almost an hour of competing. His superior body blocking enabled him to retain his female and they continued on together through the bay.
The sunshine was out in the afternoon and we were greeted by the beautiful Bottlenose Dolphins who gathered around our bow. They looked happy and well fed after a day of feeding on schools of bait fish, jut like the Gannets, Albatross and Crested Terns did too. The first interaction was with a lovely escort pod who were both mature aged adults and enjoying an afternoon cruise to the reef line. Getting ready for the next stage of their journey, they both came over to have a quick look at us before hanging out close to the exit pathway. We left them to continue their afternoon rest and began moving towards four pods beginning to converge. Full body breaching and head lunging communicated to the others not to get too close to this pod and a few responses popped up around the bay. The rain front arrived and we watched on as the whales, not even slightly distracted by the falling rain, continued to push forward and even appeared to enjoy the sensation of the rain on their flukes and rostrum as they lifted them gracefully above the oceans surface.
