Whales 'Hunting' Humans !!

by Dave Bain
(Broulee)

The whales at Broulee have been extremely active over the past few weeks. There have been numerous Southern Right Whales off the rocks at South Broulee and in Broulee Bay with easy viewing off the rocks and beach.

Sea kayak tours with Total Eco Adventures have been encountering whales in the last few weeks at Broulee, Mossy Point and Tomakin along with whale experiences from our Stand Up Paddle (SUP) boards.

Dave & Belinda from Total Eco Adventure Tours said "On a recent personal encounter (Tuesday 24/8/10), to get a closer view of the whales we paddled out on Stand Up Paddle (SUP) boards into Broulee Bay towards a lone Southern Right Whale that was hanging about. Keeping our distance well within the Eco Tourism whale watching standards, the whale seemed pretty disinterested in us and started a slow journey North along the beach. After accompanying the whale for a while we decided to sit down on our SUP boards to relax and watch another approaching whale. As soon as we had sat down the whale we had been following turned around and headed back towards us, straight back at us actually... until we began to get a little unnerved and began to paddle away. The whale then followed us and repeatedly dove beneath us as we paddled in circles trying to stay away from the bulking mass as we were nervous about being bumped off our boards. For about 20 minutes this game continued and we slowly began to grow comfortable with the whale coming right up close to us, we realised she was as curious about us as we were about her and it almost felt like she was laughing at us as she trailed very closely behind. After a few close encounters and as we grew comfortable, the whale seemed to sense this change and then began to show off, giving us and the new whale companion an impressive show. This involved tail slaps, fin slaps, spy hopping (raising the head above the water) and deep dives only a few metres away from us".

Belinda said "The whole experience was quite magical and the sort of encounter that you can only dream of. Apart from looking at the photos we managed to take the experience seems somewhat unreal thinking back on it".

http://www.totalecoadventures.com.au/