We wake to a beautiful winters day. Not what I expected with the forecast for the day and not what we are told we will wake up with tomorrow. Bernie arrives to tell me that he cant be at the lookout this morning as he will be attending a funeral for an old local well known fisherman. But he tells me that he has been watching two humpbacks that took 30 minutes to travel from just off Marine Drive to over past the Quarantine buoy. We find these whales east of the mussel lease north of Mistaken Island, traveling towards Seal Rock. We follow for a while but they are very quiet so when we get close to Seal Rock we decide to head out towards Limestone Head. On board we have a passenger whose father runs a whale watching vessel out of Hervey Bay, so when she tells me that we have more whales at 10 o'clock I head that way. As we get closer I wonder what we are seeing as things don't seam "normal". I ask Eve my deckie to bring my camera up to me at the fly bridge helm. We find a humpback laying on the surface and not moving. Then it all makes sense we see a baby take several breaths, laying close to mum. We stay for a while getting pictures of this tiny baby. Has it just been born, how old is it? I did notice that the babies dorsal fin was standing straight although very very small, this usually tells us that the calf is at least 10 days old. We leave so mum will not get stressed. seeing more whales south we head out. We find a young lone whale heading west and tag along for a little while. Then breaches about 800 metres further south. 3 more blows 600 metres south east, 2 blows east, blows several km east and breaching to the south west.
Of course humpbacks will breach once or 30 times so its a little hard to make an educated choice which pod to follow. Folks it's just pot luck some times.
"Think Whales think Albany"
Master of the vessel Paul Guest
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