This morning marks our 100th trip in a row that we’ve spotted whales!! A big congratulations to all the staff and crew that have made this possible.
Sea conditions were calm at first this morning, but soon picked up to 10 knots southerly with a slight chop on the water. We spotted two pods of two and a single whale; five altogether. One breached right by Mudjimba Island. We followed one of the pods for a couple of hours and had several close encounters and tail slaps performed for us. A third whale joined the pair, and they performed several chin slaps, multiple breaches, pectoral slaps and fluke updives. A great trip to mark our perfect whale season.
The 10.30 trip met us with good seas, but a little windier than this morning with 12 knot southerly winds. 3 miles off Point Cartwright we spotted a mother and her calf, about 5 – 6 weeks old. The mother did a tail throw while the calf imitated and performed breaches, then he tried an upside down tail slap, which didn’t really work! We saw breaching whales in the distance, however time didn’t allow us to visit this pod. There were a couple of turtles we spotted which seemed to have a stripe across their eyes, which can only lead us to believe that we came across some Ninja Turtles out on a secret mission…
The afternoon picked up a little bit with 15 knot winds and quite a bit of chop on the water. We found our first whales about 7 miles North East of Point Cartwright; a mother and calf who performed several breaches for us the first 15-20 minutes we followed them. They went quiet for a bit and we spotted two single whales swimming past. The mother and calf were a bit shy and started breaching again as we were pulling away.