Whale Watching

So it is the week before some of my bigger finals and I have been studying really hard but all this studying has been driving me a bit crazy and in order to keep myself sane I have been doing some fun things sprinkled in all the studying. For example, I am learning how to surf this weekend. One thing I decided to do was go whale watching. Whale watching is something I have wanted to do since I was little but every time I have gone I have not been able to see whales. However, this time was completely different.

The whales that are passing by Sydney right now are traveling up from the Southern ocean near Antarctica where they have been feeding all summer. They are traveling to the equator in order to breed and have babies however they travel right by Sydney this time of year.

I decided to take a whale watching tour on an extreme raft jet. Which is essentially a boat that has these massive inner tubes under it. The driver can go really fast which makes the boat fly across the waves which was really bumpy.

When we got to the location where the whales were traveling north. Two Humpback whales threw their bodies out of the water right in front of us right away. This is called breaching. Scientists still aren’t sure why whales breach, some think it is a form of communication, others think it is to express emotion or just have fun.

We followed that pod of whales for a long time seeing some incredible breaching. One whale even swam under the boat to get a closer look at us and then resurfaced about 5 feet away from the boat.

After those whales settled down we switched to a different pod. These whales typically change pods up to 4 times a day and have no long term attachments. They are the social butterflies of the sea. This pod was filled with younger whales and there was about 3 of them that were surfacing all around us.

As we were watching those whales, another pod caught up to the pod. The driver explained that when two pods merge there can be some really exciting whale activity. When the whales caught up to the younger whales, one of the younger whales through himself out of the water doing a spin and then his buddy did three head bobs out of the water.

The whales were just really happy to have new mates that they were throwing themselves out of the water.

All of this happened about 50 feet away from the boat. It was really cool to see and one of the highlights of my trip.

After this, our time was up and we waved goodbye to the whales. After, a really bumpy ride back to Sydney, I headed home still shaking because of how cool the experience was.

They are such beautiful, happy creatures. I was so lucky to get to see them. It was definitely a bucket list item crossed off.