Steve's Whale One - Photo of the Day

02 August 2007

Whale One - Photo of the Day (02 August 2007) Well there was a lot of love on Steve’s Whale One this morning and as we ventured out 15 nautical miles directly east of Point Cartwright we found a pair of sub adult males that were more than willing to share the love with us!!! The humpbacks were first spotted only a few hundred metres away from the vessel playing with a small pod of bottle nose dolphins. Once we arrived however, the dolphins swam straight over to the boat to play in our bow wave followed closely by the 2 humpbacks who seemed to make a direct line towards the boat and came within petting distance and stayed playing around the boat and ‘mugging’ the vessel for around 45 minutes! This behaviour, referred to as mugging, basically involves the animals investigating the boat and all its occupants, rolling around on to their backs, spy hopping (where they lift their heads up out of the water just far enough that their eyes pop out and they can see everything above the surface) and generally just playing around us. We obviously try to encourage this behaviour by making a lot of noise and cheering the animals as they interact with us.These animals stayed with us for two hours, all through lunch and coming back in very close after lunch so that we could get another look and interaction with the enthusiastic young whales and so close that when they exhaled we could smell their fishy breath as it washed over us.An absolutely amazing day with so many magical photos we almost couldn’t choose which ones to share with you… Hopefully you can see with some of these photos just how close we were to the whales and just how incredible the interaction with these gentle giants was.Possibly the most special experience one can have with the humpback whales, you not only get to view them in their natural environment, up close and personal, in all their beauty but to actually have that interaction with them, where they’ve chosen to come over and play around the vessel and definitely acknowledge our presence and enthusiasm is an experience we all aspire to have.Talk to you all again tomorrowSara J