6th - 12th July 2018 Whale Watching

Thu, 12 Jul 2018

By Eco Ranger James

6th - 12th July Whale Watching Weekly Wrap

What a wicked week it’s been for whale watching with 88 whale encounters! We have predominantly seen mature adults which is to be expected for this time of the year as they are all still in the first half of their migration. We had an absolute cracker of a day on Tuesday with 30 whale sighted, we had some large pods of 5 and 6 with some whales striving for attention pectoral slapping over 20 times in a row!

This behaviour was just incredible to witness the Humpback whale has the largest limb of any animal on earth it is one third the length of the body so if the whale is 15 meters long you could expect that fin to be 5 meters long and 5 tones. We were even close enough to hear that massive fin come crashing down into the waves!

Check out some of the photos from this week's whale watching cruises below:


On Wednesday we found ourselves a few miles north of Cape Moreton observing a couple of mature adults travelling slowly on the leeward side of Flinders reef these two felt very comfortable with us approaching the boat several times. As we began our return trip to Tangalooma Island Resort it began to rain rather heavily, usually this would make the whales harder to spot but to our surprise threw the rainy windows we could see a HUGE Rostrum (Whales upper and lower jaw) protruding from the water. This is what we know as a “Spy hop” that’s when the whale positions themselves vertically in the water to get a bit of a glimpse of the outside world, after all they are very curious inquisitive creatures! We were lucky enough to see this for nearly 40 seconds it was so incredible to watch it even brought guests back outside in the drizzly conditions!

It may be known as a whale watch but we have also been very lucky to experience plenty of Dolphins and turtles this week its estimated we get around 10,000 green sea turtles and around 600 inshore bottlenose dolphins in the bay so this is a regular sight for us.

With the sightings we’re witnessing now we can only imagine it will keep getting better and better out there on the water.

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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