Why Do Whales Tail Slap? Generally it is a defensive or dominant part of the Language of the Whales and used to clear the area round them. We started our morning tour heading out to the sighting grounds with a slight spring breeze and calm seas. It wasn’t long until we sighted our first humpback whales slowly moving south as they start their long way home to Antarctica for feeding over the summer time. We traveled with this pod of two for a while until we were pleasantly surprise by a third whale surfacing going the pod.
They started to relax and play with each other with soft pec slaps and gentle tail dives, then out of nowhere the smallest whale out of the three made a big move with a huge tail lob. The others soon settled down after that and separating from this energetic little humpback.
We spotted another pod of two just ahead staying away from the drama by swimming quietly south. Our humpback’s way of using the language of the whales always astounds us with they unique way of communication, the slightest tail slap or head lunge can mean so many different things depending on what whales are around.
We had two very chatty whales in our afternoon tour with tail slap after tail slap and tail lob after tail lob giving our onboard photographers many chances to get the ID image from their tails for our research catalog and some very beautiful pictures for our wonderful guests.
As we spent the early afternoon with these two whales they started very calm and relax before the slightly bigger whale out of the two launched into a huge tail lob sparky the second whale to do the same. They then started tail slaps, inverted tail slaps, tail lobs, and a unique style of tail slap we like to call the hammer. It’s when the whale raises their fluke high into the air to then slap down to the side like a hammer instead of straight down.
There are many reasons why whales tail slap but for this time today we believe it was predatory behaviour. We have had a large Great White shark swimming up and down the west coast the last few days leaving our whales a little jumpy which is the same behaviour we saw yesterday with another pod cruising calmly before launching into huge tail slapping which is a very dominant behaviour to clear out their surroundings.
Our two whale finally settled and were on their way south before we let them go on their way as we went back home after another wonderful day learning the Language of the Whales.
