Coolangatta/Tweed Heads Humpback Whale Migration 12th June 09
On Thursday 11th June the humpback whales had one thing on their mind and that was ‘let’s travel today’ no play, just travel. We had a great day out off Coolangatta, the seas were a little on the choppy side, but certainly not rough. We found 2 pods, one with around 5 humpbacks with a one year old calf in amongst the adults, travelling around 7knots and not at all active, but still surfacing every 5 minutes or so. We left these humpbacks and turned around to head south again and came across another pod of a cow and her last year’s calf, doing the same thing as the other pod, just travelling.
All in all, a great day out, we had plenty of whales to look at and everyone enjoyed the day.
Today, the whales were more active, a little way out to sea today, around 5 miles, still moving along reasonably quickly though. Our first humpback was very happy showing off his tail and surfacing at regular intervals, this one was on his/her own. A little further north off Burleigh Heads we spotted a whale breaching and decided to go and take a look. Another lone whale very happy indeed. He/she quite happy that we were in the area and constantly came in behind the boat, diving underneath us a couple of times. Everyone onboard was very excited. We travelled with this humpback for about 40 minutes as he/she showed us plenty of tale action – towards the end we were blessed with a beautiful big breach just in front of the boat – how lucky are we ?
This time of year there’s a good steady flow of Humpback whales coming past the Gold Coast, not too far out to sea and seems to be a lot of cow and calves making their way north for the first time. A lot of lone whales too. Within a week, we should start seeing multiple pods all over the coast.
Have a great day and see you out whale watching off Coolangatta real soon.
Cheers for now
Carol ‘The Whale Women”