The return of Pearl the white whale today was an incredible sighting and interaction we will always treasure. Our day was filled with breathtaking moments as we witnessed spectacular breaches during both our morning and afternoon departures. This afternoon, we had an incredible encounter when two remarkably curious Humpback Whales came face-to-face with our underwater camera.
As we set off from Augusta Boat Harbour on a beautiful winter’s day, a delightful surprise awaited us as we approached our first morning pod. Three young Humpbacks surfaced together, creating quite the stir when suddenly, an enormous head lunge from a Southern Right Whale caught us all off guard. The Humpbacks quickly took the hint and departed, revealing the jet-black back of a massive Southern Right Whale. To our astonishment, a second individual surfaced—it was a grey morph! Only 4% of the Southern Right Whale population are born white and as they mature will change into a grey morph or brindle and Pearl has settled into a spectacular grey morph.
With hearts racing, we speculated whether this might be Pearl, the white Southern Right Whale calf born in Season 2016 and sighted again in Season 2019. After consulting our catalogue, we confirmed that it was indeed our beloved Pearl, all grown up and looking quite impressive! It is an incredible feeling to see a wild whale from an endangered species grow and we are very grateful that Pearl continues to revisit Flinders Bay and even better to see her looking so well. Cruising across the bay with her friend she was relaxed and she certainly has become a whale that our family, crew and Pod Members treasure and love dearly.
It was hard to say farewell as we could have travelled with her all day, but we are confident we will see her again and hopefully she continues to enjoy some time in Augusta before moving on to her next destination. Our next pod was the boisterous Humpback Whales as communication began to flow with breaching from multiple pods as one female began to pec slap and breach near to us while trying to attract some attention her way. Launching right alongside us it was an incredible sound as thousands of kilograms crashed down onto the oceans surface. A second female joined in and breached her way across our bow completing a wonderful morning tour we will always treasure.
The afternoon was also a blast as we arrived to multiple pods and one cheeky young male Humpback surfaced right on our bow and as he approached launched into an impressive tail lob. Showing off his spunkiness and also dominance he was letting us know he was the boss as he to approach for a close encounter. Soon he was joined by another young male as both swam around and around the Steep Point, so close we could see their eyes wide open and looking back our way.
Arry did a fantastic job of capturing the moment with some beautiful GoPro footage captured of these two most beautiful, gentle Humpback Whales. A while later a female Humpback began to breach and in a similar spirit to the morning she was trying to capture the other whales attention. Breaching for over twenty minutes we lost count of the breaches as she danced around us in her spectacular way. It was an incredible day out with the whales of Western Australia and we are still buzzing from having seen Pearl again, her legend and star status continues to grow!
