Or fours, or fives, or … in fact this year has been the most extraordinary adventure for me.<\/p>\n
I clearly remember these three male humpback whales during my recent visit to Tonga.
\nThey were showoffs! How they came close enough to say ‘look at us’ but stayed far enough away to remain aloof.<\/p>\n
They played games with each other staying just out of reach making fun of our inability to keep up or to move with their agility and grace.
\nThey showed affection to each other with indifference to our presence.
\nThey reminded us that this was their world and we were only welcome by their choosing.
\nThe simply truth that they choose to be with us at all is something amazing and still fills me up with gratitude.<\/p>\n
Looking back at my visit to Vava’u this year I am reminded how deeply my experiences with these beautiful whales has moved me.<\/p>\n
Thank you Tony and Darren for the awareness and the inspiration.
\nThank you Liam for making it real.<\/p>\n
I am really looking forward to returning.<\/p>\n
Photo: Robert Rath, ‘Good Things Come In Threes’ 1\/200s f\/6.3 ISO320 15mm<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Or fours, or fives, or … in fact this year has been the most extraordinary adventure for me. I clearly remember these three male humpback whales during my recent visit to Tonga. They were showoffs! How they came close enough to say ‘look at us’ but stayed far enough away to remain aloof. They played […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1649,610,1644,1646,1643,1639,70,1647,192,1648,1641,29,1642,1638,1640],"class_list":["post-6321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animal","tag-behaviour","tag-cetacean","tag-humpback","tag-kingdomoftonga","tag-megapteranovaeangliae","tag-ocean","tag-social","tag-swimming","tag-threesome","tag-tonga","tag-travel","tag-vavau","tag-whale","tag-whalewatching"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6323,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6321\/revisions\/6323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wetshutter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}