Whale Watching Take Two!

Saturday, September 10 – today was our second attempt at snorkelling with the humpback whales (Tofua’a). We woke up to calm weather with a hint of rain in the sky but decided it was worth going out for the day anyway. We had a lot of chores to do on land before whale watching as we were planning to leave for an anchorage first thing on Sunday morning to wait for a weather window to sail to Fiji. We had a different Skipper today but the boat was the same as the one we had previously used with the added benefit of an engine overhaul before our trip. We got off to a good start and we spotted a mother and calf near the entrance. Unfortunately another boat was with the pair and it is an unwritten rule that if a boat finds a whale before noon you must leave the area and find your own. No problem the Skipper was confident that we would find some more humpbacks. We motored along the channel and soon spotted a blowhole in the distance. On closer inspection we realized it was a male escort that was moving too fast for us to snorkel with. We left him alone and continued our search. We saw other boats with whales but it was still only mid morning. After 2 hours we hadn’t spotted any other whales and we could see boats motoring around in search of them. Eventually we came across 3 boats watching a mother and calf. We waited for our turn to snorkel, dived in and saw nothing. We jumped in again but the whales dived below us. On the third attempt we waited patiently in the water. All of a sudden the baby whale appeared in front of us. It was breaching and playing on the surface and even slapped it’s tail before making a mini dive which the attached photos show in sequence. I looked down into the blue and saw the mother beneath me. She was calling the baby to come with her. The baby looked at us curiously with its large eye, assessed the situation then decided to swim down to the mother. Luckily I captured this amazing scene on video. It was a wonderful experience to be in the water with these 2 highly intelligent creatures (according to Ian more intelligent than Sheryl who forgot to bring our packed lunch for the 6 hour day). Thrilled with our experience we left the whales to the other boats and went to look for more whales but unfortunately we only came across male escorts in transit. By the time we got back to the anchorage it was raining heavily again. We were very tired but satisfied by our efforts and I had some nicer photos than the previous trip on Thursday.