‘Play with me’, the whale suggested as he circled the girl closer and closer. How do you play with a creature 400 times your diminutive frame? ‘Play with me’, the whale intoned with a soundless expression and an oh so gentle nudge. How do you not panic, how do you trust being pushed through the […]
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‘Tag me if you can!’, a school yard taunt remembered from long ago. Yet here we are again playing that game of dare, chase and tag on a scale un-imagined from a landlocked childhood. Who would have thought we would encounter Humpback whales both adept and eager to play our boyhood game. We’d swim away […]
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Sometimes I wonder just who was checking out who! No sooner had we arrived here and two large humpback whales appeared about 100m away. As soon as we realised they were heading straight for our boat there was a mad scramble for masks, fins and cameras. They came closer; 50m, 25m, 10m and then the […]
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The the big male far below me had already started blowing bubbles on his last descent. As his stream of bubbles ascended from below it expanded and divided over and over like some roiling cauldron until the ocean became a sea of bubbles telling of his progress far beneath me. As I watched all five […]
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We followed these three humpback whales on the surface for a while as they played their own games, indifferent to our attempts to get their attention. On one particular drop the three dived in unison and came to rest around 20m below the surface where for a while they remained in this beautiful group cuddle, […]
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