Thursday 24 July 2014

8 Humpbacks

Peter Bell from Discovery Bay, (Whale World) txt's to say whales are at the dive site HMAS Perth at 0900 hours. We head out and head straight towards Seal Rock. As we get about half way there Jason has joined me and straight away says he can see a whale slapping its tail on the water over towards Limestone Head. It makes sense the whales Peter could be there no troubles. I increase revs and its not long before we are in the area, but cant find the whales easy. Looking, looking, looking.

There they are, WOW they seam quiet for whales that were slapping their tails on the surface not 10 minutes ago. The 2 humpback whales are small and just cruising toward Bald Head just metres off the coast. We follow at times having to stop and wait as the whales are in no rush.
We follow until the whales head out past Bald Head, We are now out in the Southern Ocean and yes we have a bit of swell out here.
We see blows east so head that way to find 2 whales taking several breaths and then diving.

Ok more blows several hundred metres away towards Breaksea Island, so off we go.
We find 4 Humpbacks spending time on the surface at times lurching out of the water. We follow as these whales head west towards Bald Head. The whales are ahead of us and we stop before we head off to check out the seals. Jason who is scanning the area lets every one know we have now 2 whales heading up behind us.
We watch them cruise past and then head off to the seals for a look before we head back in to King George Sound.

As we cruise past Discovery Bay, (Whale World) Jason comes to the fly bridge and as he sits down I say to him that there are two whales over towards a ship that is at anchor. We think they are travelling towards Goode Beach and we talk about cutting them off at the pass.
"Best laid plans of mice and men are bound to go astray"


We head to mid way along Goode Beach after we have explained to our passengers some of the history of the old whaling station. But we don't see the whales blow again. We are running late so we dont worry too much, cutting between Mistaken Island we still cant spot the whales and now the talk is about the may be them being a cow and calf as the second blow was very small and they are very quiet. I guess we will never know.

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