1 August 2021
As the saying goes, A Sunday well spent brings a week of content! With calm sea conditions outside the headland at Mt Tomaree, it has been a beautiful morning searching for Humpback Whales.
Our first sighting of the day by the crew on the Hinchinbrook Explorer was a pod of two Humpback Whales heading north bound from Fingal Island. The pair were not the easiest to track with both whales diving for 7-10 minutes at a time. We can see another pod further south beside our current pod that are completing even longer sounding dives of up to 15 minutes at a time.
The MV Spirit of Port Stephens has departed the d’Albora Marina at 11am and have spent time following adjacent to the pod of two whales spotted by the Hinchinbrook Explorer. With a lot of patience Captain Dan has kept pace with the whales swimming and much to everyone’s surprise the whales have suddenly become super active performing a breach-a-thon with the whales putting on a majestic display of approx 30 breaches in a row.
The one rule of whale watching is never take your eyes off the whales, or turn your back on a whale because you just never know what you may miss! For our passengers on this afternoons whale watch cruise we have viewed two Humpback Whales, one heading north bound and the other already on its journey south bound. There was a bit of activity with one of the whales showing its full power and force by slapping the surface of the water with it tail fluke. We also saw one whale breach at the once, but unfortunately most passengers missed seeing it, only turning in time to be witness to the large splash as the whale has crashed back to into the water.
We have also sighted a pod of Common Dolphins whilst off shore.