27 JULY 2024
MV Osprey and her crew have located an extremely large pod of 10 – 15 Humpback Whales close to Fingal Island on our first whale watch cruise of the day. The pod included at least five very boisterous males that were clearly vocalising and grunting to show their dominance to others within the pod in an active and fast-paced heat run. The whales were darting about in different directions, and eventually breaking away into smaller pods. Just before moving away from the whales Skipper Ben has spotted a breaching whale not too far away and has taken a chance and cruised the boat toward the whale, but of course, murphy’s law as we got closer the whale had stopped breaching!
Plenty of action during today’s Whale Watch Express at 1:30pm! We got the trifecta; whales, dolphins and seals.
The search for the whales was a little slow to start, with plenty of blows and splashes visible on the horizon, but not a lot of activity visible in range. As we traveled south, we got a call about a pair of humpbacks traveling close to the islands. Not long after settling in with the northbound pair, we spotted activity a little further offshore. We watched a pair of humpbacks repeatedly ‘double breach’, so off we went to try and catch the action! Persistence paid off as we were treated to a variety of surface behaviors from the active pair.
Photo Credit: Lisa Skelton