Saturday 15 June 2013

Juveniles.

The forecast was for better weather today than yesterday, so I should not have been surprised when I arrived at the boat to find no wind and clear blue skies.

We chat to "Bernie" on the UHF radio as we leave Princess Royal Harbour and he tells us he cant see any whales inside King George Sound at this time. We head towards Limestone Head when "Bernie" calls to say he has seen something over near the Perth Dive Site. We head in that direction and its not long before we find a young humpback whale.

These young whales we are seeing may be 2 years old and have been left on the south coast by their mothers, who will be back in the mating cycle this year. Whales mate every 3 years, with a gestation period of 9 months they will mate this year, calf next year and stay in Antarctica the following year to wean  their young. Then may be some of the 2 year olds follow mum as she heads north and she slips away at the coast when she can. Well our young whale I think has been here for 4 days, and although he has cut loose at times and put on a great show for those lucky enough to see it from whale world.

But today he was pretty quiet, so after a bit of a look we headed off to see what we could find.
We head out towards Michaelmas Island to find another young whale. This whale is also a bit uncooperative first but then starts to head toward Bald Head so we can travel along side.

The sea is calm the sky is blue and it makes watching this young whale easy as it swims just under the surface. We travel home via Whale-world, Water Bay Cove, Goode Beach and Mistaken Island and I get a bit of a rest when all the kids on board have a turn driving.

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