Whale Watching Trip

Thursday, September 8 – today we hired a small powerboat and a Skipper with a snorkelling licence so that we could have a close encounter of a different kind with the humpback whales (Tofua'a). We had 2 free spots on the boat so we invited Ken from Cosimo to join us for the day. Wendy declined the trip at the last minute and I guess she had some kind of uncanny premonition of the day ahead. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t as enthusiastic as we were and the sea state was very unfavourable for spotting and snorkelling with whales. Anyway we headed out of the bay at 9:30am and after only an hour a whale had been spotted with a calf. This was sounding way too easy. We got our wet suits on and all our snorkelling equipment ready thinking that this was going to be a short day out. As we got closer to the location the boat radioed the Skipper again and recommended that we didn’t head over to the whales because they were in the open sea and it was too rough for our small boat. Unfortunately the outboard engine wasn’t working very efficiently either and we didn’t want to be out at sea with a breakdown. No problem we decided to find our own whales in the calmer water of the passage. Easier said then done though. After 2 hours of bouncing along in the passage next to Hunga Island we still hadn’t spotted any whales. The Skipper said they had snorkelled with many whales yesterday in calm water in the same area but luck wasn’t with us today. Around noon we got another call to say that a mother, calf and male escort where in the bay next to us. We motored over to find 2 other whale watching boats with snorkelers in the water. Tongan law only permits a maximum of 5 snorkelers at one time with the whales. While we were waiting over 2 hours for our turn to snorkel we noticed that the whales weren’t really interacting with the humans and the Skipper said the male kept diving down deep and encouraging the mother and calf to join him rather than stay on the surface. The male also started breaching which was exciting but not a good sign they wanted us to be around them. Oh great we had been patiently waiting in the cold on a bouncy boat and picked non-compliant whales to snorkel with. The Skipper finally took us over to the group and we frantically swam towards the whales but they soon disappeared. There was a lot of surface chop and the visibility was poor. We got back in the boat and he dropped us again but the whales all dived below us. We tried a third time and thought we had a good chance of seeing them underwater as they were next to a coral reef but the cheeky whales dived below us again. Before the whales dived we were lucky enough to see the baby breaching next to us. Luckily the baby whale didn’t land in our direction or we would have been squashed. For a creature of that size it made a huge splash and wake in the water. On the last attempt Ken and I saw the mother and calf under the water as they were diving down to the male. It was a fantastic experience to see them underwater but they looked a lot larger above water than below. The visibility wasn’t too great because of the overcast weather and big swells but I managed to take 2 grainy photos of the mother and calf. Unfortunately Ian didn’t even get to see the whales underwater as his fin got stuck on the back of the boat and the whales were gone before he could get into the water. We motored back to port soaking wet and disappointed after a very uncomfortable 7 hours at sea in a tiny boat. When we got back onboard Faraway it started raining heavily and didn’t stop until the early morning. We managed to fill our 1000 litre water tanks though and this was a happy ending to a tiring day. We found out the next day that some of the local boats had sunk. Our whale watching boat came close to sinking as well (no surprises there). The only thing that saved the boat was the fact that the Skipper came to work early to try and fix the engine for his next snorkelling group. The short encounter with the whales was so rewarding that weather permitting we may try to go out on another trip tomorrow as the opportunity to get so close to these wonderful marine mammals may never happen to us again. I guess some people never learn from their experiences!