Whales very friendly off Ocean Reef - video
Went for a quick jig on Sat morning before the footy. Conditions were crappy and the samson fish and amberjack had vacated the lumps close in off Ocean Reef that we had had so much fun with lately, but we did mange a few rats and Langa got a really nice snapper on jig, his jig pb.
Then the whales closed in, and as we only had PE3 gear (haha), we decided to just watch the performance.
Truly magnificant creatures, there were three whales, two adults and a calf. They hung around right over the lump we were fishing and on a drift one came up right behind the boat and tail slapped the water right behind the boat.....scared the bejesus out of me so we moved away a few hundred meters in case the adults were getting protective of the calf, but they came over and hung about for 15 minutes, just lolling about next to the boat checking us out.
Wonderful experience that my dodgy iphone video does not do justice.....
Boston Whaler 235 Conquest......getting the flogging it was built for.
beau
Posts: 4104
Date Joined: 24/01/10
How cool is it to have them
How cool is it to have them be actually intersted in the boat. We had a minke whale which I thinkis pretty rare around these parts swim laps around the boat for over half an hour. One time it popped its head up out of the water and was checking us out on the boat. Did a google search when I got home and found a report Sunday Night had done on these minkes on the Great Barrier reef where a couple days once a year they become real inquisitive of humans and interaction and they swim with them. They also said the Great Barrier was the only recorded place it happenend, this guy definitely wanted us to jump in and have a swim!
Ben Derecki
Posts: 1926
Date Joined: 10/10/07
Pretty cool. How close were
Pretty cool. How close were they John, looks about 6-7m away?
meglodon
Posts: 5981
Date Joined: 17/06/10
Thanks for sharing
Thank you for sharing your great experience with the whales. You have had a great privilege on the water with some of natures biggest living mammals.
JohnF
Posts: 2836
Date Joined: 07/07/10
Yeah, about a boat length
Yeah, about a boat length away, it was quite obvious they were very curious and just wanted to check us out. The large one went head down, tail up for a few minutes, just sitting inverted in one spot next to the boat. Pretty surreal.
I naturally charged each deckie $200 each for the whale watching experience......haha.
Boston Whaler 235 Conquest......getting the flogging it was built for.
uncle
Posts: 9480
Date Joined: 10/02/07
excellent stuff
John, pity you didn;t get more footage
all aggressive fish love bigjohnsjigs