Aug 19, 2014
After some filming in the morning we raised our anchor at 1115 and left the merrily chirping birds, green Spinifex and tropical palms behind. Whale Song moved slowly out of the islands in the glassy calm conditions to peruse north of Koolan Island and Cockatoo Island, surveying for whales.
Everyone took their positions across the ship. Being after lunch, I drove Whale Song for a change. I have been a tad busy lately photographing the whales, so our good crew have been covering for me. Carrie observed and entered data, Daffy observed from the fly-bridge or was prepared to deploy and monitor sonobuoys and Doug took “the eagles’ nest”, his favoured spotting possie high on the RADAR deck. Leighton climbed the foremast, so with at least half of our crew looking, it was all eyes for’w’d and aft, scanning for white, wispy blows and dark, brown bodies. With handheld radios and big voices, all personnel communicated across all areas of the vessel. ‘Got a blow at 2 o’clock and 2 miles’ Doug called over the vhf, from the tower above the wheelhouse. ‘Looks like 2 whales, there might be a calf, yep definitely a calf!’ Excitedly, Doug confirmed his sighting. Off we headed at 060 degrees to starboard from our course, to see what, where and who was in this pod.
This little calf we named Reef fluke-slapped at least 25 times!
Sure enough, the pod sighted at 2 o’clock on the ships’ dial, indeed had a calf with its’ mum, and as well an escort. Oh, to be a calf! It looks so much fun! This little calf had lots of vim and vigour. With its’ exuberant pluck, this little calf appeared to be working its’ way through our data sheet, getting variously stuck on several of the behaviours! At first from 2 miles out, the calf did 27 full breaches and then 3 half breaches! We were concerned the little poppet would get tired, but no, this was just the beginning! Next on the list were fluke-slaps, 25 of these were recorded. This behaviour by the calf involves crashing the underside of the tail fluke on the water surface creating big splashes, well big is a relative term! If you are one and a half tonnes and 5 metres long, you can make quite a large splash, if you try really hard! Next the calf did some mini-surface charges, surging out of the water quickly at the beginning of each surfacing. Motor-boating was also ticked on our sheet. This cute as a button, little tacker swam along at the surface with its’ head cocked upwards at the surface with the tail flukes moving as well, giving the whale the appearance of swimming on the top of the water! This calf certainly understood joie de vivre!
Swimming along on top of the water is called Motor-boating, it looks really funny!
Back into Yampi Sound we dallied near sunset. The twilight-hued sky variously silhouetted or bathed in tangerine, the scraggily vegetation and rock textures of the surrounding mainland topography.
Happiness is… seeing healthy, happy humpback whale calves everyday!
Mich
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