Steve's Whale One - Photo of the Day

18 July 2007

Whale One - Photo of the Day (18 July 2007)

We found a mother and calf 4 nautical miles off Point Cartwright that cruised with us for about 20 minutes before we decided leave them to their bonding time and went in search of more playful whales. We found an extremely energetic yearling (one year old) all by ‘himself’ who was breaching and going berserk. Since he was alone we assume he was doing this to make himself known to the other pods of whales in the area. We then found another 3 pods of whales which advertised their presence with tail slaps and discovered that they were coming together (affiliating).

We witnessed courtship behaviour right beside the boat with the whales bubble netting underneath the boat (males do this to hide the females they are courting from other males in the area). This was followed by an amazing breach by one of the adults 20 metres off the starboard side of the boat with the gorgeous backdrop of the glasshouse mountains. These animals came right in close to the bow of the boat before moving off to play with each other and the nearby dolphins.

All up we had an incredible day spotting at least 12 humpback whales, common dolphins and bottle nose dolphins, a green turtle right beside the boat and quite a few Australasian ganets, Brown booby birds and crested terns.

We’ll send you another update tomorrow on our way back in… feel free to forward this on and if you like we’ll get an email list together to send this out daily if you want to let us know who’d like the regular updates.

Talk to you again tomorrow

Sara J