Whales chasing Dolphins

Bernie tells me that whales are breaching off Limestone Head, so that's the direction we head when we clear the channel entrance of princess Royal Harbour. It takes us about 15to 20 minutes to get to the area and we find the young whale heading towards Bald Head. We tag a long for about 20 minutes by which time we are heading west, south of Bald Head. This whale is not spending much time on the surface and knowing that blows had been seen east of our present location we turn and head in that direction. We see whales south as we are traveling east but I don't wish to start out travels to Antarctica just yet. Its not long before we see several blows so continue to investigate. As we get closer we notice some dolphins jumping full length from the water as the whales break the surface. Common Dolphins are a little smaller than Bottle-nose Dolphins and have a very distinctive stripe down their side where they change color, unlike Bottle-nose Dolphins that go from a dark gray on their backs to light gray on their belly with a gradual change of color. Well pod of dolphins seamed to number some where around 30 including very young ones staying close to their mothers.

 We start to travel with the whales trying hard to get a count. First thoughts were about 6 whales but after cruising with them for some time 8 whales seamed to be the count. We cruise with them for some time trying hard to get pics of them throwing their tails out of the water or pics that could convey the total number of whales in the pod. Thank goodness for digital cameras.

As we travel along side this pod we count several other pods off our port side. We also see another pod west of us about 1 km from Bald Head. We could have just sat their and waited for them. 
We are now running late for out "Estimated Time of Return" submitted to local sea rescue radio operators so we leave the large pod motor to the 3 whales so we can add them to our daily count and then head for home. As we do we drop into the New Zealand seal colony that frequent the cove just north of Bald Head. Once again the cameras start firing as the seal pups slide into the water from their sleeping positions on the rocks.

14 Humpback whales counted close to the boat and possibly the same number so far away that we could not add these numbers to our daily sightings page. We log only the whales that we have got with in 400 metres from and at times we just cant get that close to all the blows that we see, as we would just never get home at night.

"Think Whales Think Albany"
Master of the vessel Paul Guest