Gold Coast Whale Watching – Coolangatta Whale Watch
More exciting stuff here on the Gold Coast – Southern Hemisphere Humpbacks on their way North migrating past Coolangatta in big groups
Wednesday – 30th June - 6 whales
We came across our first pod off Kingscliff at 9.30 with 4 in the pod and very active, this pod had one whale in it that was possibly the largest whale I have ever seen in all my years whale watching – this whale was huge and very black, hardly any white on him at all, nice big black belly with white spots and he was breaching like crazy, we counted several breaches by 10.05 and still going, I reckon this whale would have been 16 meters minimum this was an OMG !! whale and big and beautiful, we stayed with this group until around 11.10am, so a whole hour and a half of fantastic whale watching. We left the pod to travel on their merry way, all still travelling together and headed off closer to shore making our way back in and came across a turtle and a small pod of dolphins.
We could see breaching whales off Burleigh and we stopped to watch breaching whales off Coolangatta near Cook Island.
Wednesday afternoon – heaps and heaps
Spotted our first pod straight off Tugun, with several pods spread all over the place, the Tugun pod were breaching, we could see another pod breaching off Surfers. We had two pods off to the right and 3 pods off to the left and another pod behind us – whale action this arvo. The pod on the left was tail lobbing and pectoral fin slapping whilst the pod on the right was breaching, with one whale continually breaching.
One pod of 4 whales pectoral slapping and spy hopping with each other, obvously the afternoon sun was promoting a lot of run and games for the whales as they chased each other and played all afternoon. One whale continued to breach all the way to Surfers for us, we had a spectacular afternoon with some great footage.
Thursday 1st July – 7 pods – 15 or so whales
First pod spotted by 9.30 around 4 miles off shore – not at all active, so we left him and headed south to a breaching pod off Kingscliff, this pod was different, they were awake and breaching – ya hoo!! We spotted another pod coming up from the south, another 2 pods off to the side of us and one off to the right all by 10.15am. Another pod of 2 breached right near the boat and travelled next to us for a short period with another pod behind us tail lobbing around 10.30am – plenty of action and by 11am we had a pod of whales double breaching – yes breaching together – another OMG – We were so happy with todays events we sent the footage off to Chanel 7 news and they put it on the news that night in the weather section.
We saw one Albatross today
Does this get any better !!!!
Friday – 2nd July – sleepy whales
9.20 first pod off Coolangatta, not at all active – in fact they dived and not to be seen again !! they do that !! but by 9.30 we had found another pod that was more interactive, a pod of 3 off Cooli with tail flicks and they came close to the boat for a bit of a look see !! by 10.05 we had seen around 5 pods. Another pod coming up from the south and another pod out wider – all whales were sleepy today – rest day and no bird life either
Saturday 3rd July -
9.25 whales breaching off Cooli, had a couple of breaches and then they settled into a nice swimming patten. We left this pair at 9.45 as they were not that active and headed down to Kingscliff, we could see one pod out wider but headed south to a pod off Kingscliff – whales not active again today, sun shining, sloppy sea and not as cold today – it has been freezing. We saw 2 albatross and one dolphin. Not a lot of bird activity either today.
We found a pod of 4 off Cook Island all travelling in a line and one whale in the group breaching, he was a handsome whale with mostly black tones and a blochy white belly. By 11am we had seen 12 whales plus another large pod out wider.
The whales are still travelling in these wide spread big groups, so much different to previous years, they are now forming large travelling groups, as we noticed last year, this is a good sign I guess as their numbers increase they are forming big social groups – excellent. Makes it harder to find sometimes because the groups are spread out over several kilometers for eg: one group will travel together, say a 100 in the group, spread over a large area, then there will be several kilometers until the next group comes along – we still are having loads and loads of whales and it is great to see their numbers are up, we are having so much fun.
Must run need to go and see more big fat whales today (Sunday)
This has been Carol the ‘Whale Women” until later!!