A young mother humpback took advantage of the tankers anchored off of Gage Roads this morning using their sound footprint. A small blow from a very sleepy calf caught our attention, while we watched and waited for another surfacing a quick thinking Crested Tern caught his breakfast and was on his way. Our sleepy calf soon surfaced very close to us but with no sign of mum we wondered where she was hiding. A dark shadow started to appear right under her calf with a big exhale, there she was. Showing similar behaviour to her calf rest mode was activated, after a very long migration we respect and appreciate our whales to let them rest and observe their behaviour not influence it. Unfortunately a vessel close by didn’t have the same respect and disturbed our mother and calf. Our calf started tail lobbing and inverted tail slapping, a very aggressive and defensive behaviour.
We stayed put and watched our mum and calf communicate towards this vessel, after a few small tail lobs by the calf mum decided to take this opportunity to teach her calf the Language of the Whales with her own surface activity After a while both settled back down and went back into rest behaviour, we respected them and decided to slowly move off in search for more Humpbacks. It didn’t take long until we came across another mum and calf pair in line with the Perth City skyline who were also stretched out and enjoying the sunshine. Another lovely day spent with our Humpback mother and calves off the coast of Fremantle and we look forward to what our next tour will bring and who we will meet.
