20 JUNE 2025
What an incredible morning we’ve had offshore this morning on our daily whale watch cruise! As soon as we ventured past our two headlands (Tomaree and Yacaaba) we could already see an abundance of whale spouts each direction we looked. As we headed out further we came across around 3-4 pods of humpbacks totaling around 10 whales in total. These pods were all coming in nice and close to our boat along our port, starboard and bow. We had a wonderful display of breaches, head lunges, spy hopping, tail lobs, fin slaps, and even one was showing it’s underside and tail slapping for us. A large pod of oceanic dolphins didn’t want to miss out on all the fun so they joined us for some bow surfing! Venturing home we saw around 10 lazy fur seals napping at Cabbage Tree Island and then a nice pod of local bottle nose dolphins coming in past Yacaaba Headland.
Passengers aboard our afternoon Whale Watch Cruise have been treated with beautiful sunny winters afternoon on the water with glassed out conditions with little to no swell. The crew report whales in abundance with at least 4-5 pods of Humpback Whales sighted close to Fingal Island Lighthouse. A number of whales took quite an interest in MV Osprey and swimming very close to the vessel – perhaps a bit of people watching! So special when it appears as the whales are eyeing you standing on the deck of the boat. Such an entertaining and special way to spend an afternoon, even our crew were totally enjoying themselves and also in awe of the close encounter. The cruise did not end with our time with the whales, we have then cruised towards Cabbage Tree Island where there have been a number of seals basking in the sunshine on the rocks, there has also been one seal swimming in the water and he was receiving cheers and encouragement from our passenger as its launched itself out of the water to climb onto one of the rocks.
Photo credit: Lee Matthews Photography
*some images have been cropped