17th - 23rd August 2018 Whale Watching

Thu, 23 Aug 2018

By Eco Ranger James

17th - 23rd August Whale Watching

It’s been an absolutely magical week here at Tangalooma with everyday being so incredibly different! We are now in the second half of the whale watching season which means we get to see more mothers and calves using the shallow sheltered bay as a nursing and resting area.

The weather here has been lovely and calm with the Tangalooma Jet running everyday this week, although we are normally famous for seeing Humpback whales, on this cruise we were lucky enough to see a rare Southern Right Whale, which is very uncommon this far north. They grow up to 18 meters in length and up to 90 tonnes, twice that of their cousins, the Humpbacks! We were so lucky to share sightings of this mother and calf with the Northern explorer tour whale watching, located beside the Moreton Island lighthouse.

It was such an action packed week with mothers spotted with newborn calves every day! We even had one calf less than 5 meters away, breach 30 times in a row before the mother erupted and showed her young calf how it was done! On Thursday we may have only had just 4 whales but we had continuous breaching for over an hour with an estimated 100 breaches close to the boat!

Sunday gave us a pod of dolphins riding our bow wave and trying to turn the attention back to them, the pod of dolphins began growing and growing in size until their must have been close to 60 with some of those dolphins swimming only 1 or 2 meters in front of the whales rostrum almost like a game of cat and mouse or maybe some form of interspecies communication - whatever it may be it sure was incredible!


The crystal clear waters surrounding the cape have an abundance of other species we were amazed to see a magnificent manta ray glide through the water filter feeding on the surface, the manta rays can be up to 5 and a half meters in length and have the largest brain of any fish!

We were pleasantly surprised to see a healthy hammerhead shark swimming right on the surface of the water in the photic zone, hammerhead sharks are pelagic which means they are nomadic and cruise the ocean currents never finding a permanent residence.

With reports on Wednesday of a whale adjacent to the resort we know they are going further down the bay so although our whale sightings might not be as high as last month when they were all mating, we are now spending more time with mothers nursing their calves and having a bit of rest and recovery before continuing a further 8000 kilometres!

About the author

Eco Ranger James

Once part of the Tangatours team, James is now one of the Eco Rangers at Tangalooma Island Resort's Eco Centre. James often joins in on the Whale Watching Cruise as the on board Eco Ranger.

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