July 2020 Update

July is when we see a lot of adult humpback whales moving north as the northern migration starts to wrap up and the ‘crossover’ period begins. That means the early juveniles are beginning to make their way back to Antarctica as the last of adults continue toward the Great Barrier Reef. This is always an exciting and sometimes confusing time of the migration because the crew are never sure whether we should cruise to the south to find northbound whales, or cruise to the north to try and find those early southbound juveniles! In some cases, we don’t have to go far from the Heads before the whales find us. It’s always fun to figure out which direction they’re travelling.

We did see a large east coast low towards the end of the month that kept us on dry ground for several days, but as soon as that was over, we were back out there! July brought us plenty of action: a plethora of surface activities, including breaching, flipper slapping, tail slapping and head lunging.

We had one particularly exhilarating day for everyone on board when we found two humpback whales who wouldn’t stop breaching! We lost count after the first 25 breaches or so. One breach, in particular, was so impressive that our photo of it made it into one of Sydney’s prominent newspapers.