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October 6, 2005
During the 2005 Whale Festival towards the end of September, 138 whales were counted in the bay. A record I believe, since counting from the air began, soon after we settled here in 1998.
Today there is south-easter blowing – and the whales have been jumping as if the sea were about to boil. They’ve been jumping much of the day, all over the bay.
I finally went onto the balcony with binoculars to observe more closely when one large whale began jumping higher than usual – and right outside my window. {Well, he/she was about 30metres beyond the rocks directly below my workroom window).
It did some specatular jumps, then kept stationary with most of its body visible above water. Then it moved slowly backwards, somehow – I detected neither wriggling nor flapping. Then it steamed quite quickly up and down, above water and blowing small breathes often. It lobtailed once or twice; fooled around a bit. . . and suddenly disappeared.
The only pattern I could discern was the usual one: when one whale started to jump, others soon did the same. When the one outside my window stopped fooling around the rocks and suddenly disappeared, other active ones soon became quiet as well.
By 5 pm, the whole bay was quiet, as far as I could see. (Contradicting an observation of mine some years back when I noted that the whales seemed most active between 5-6 o’clock of an evening.)
Later: I took a long fast walk along the cliff to the lagoon, and noticed several whales blowing and cruising near the shore between 5.30pm and 7pm. I wouldn’t call it “activity”, but it certainly wasn’t totally quiet.
I’m glad so little is known about whales and what motivates them to do whatever they do.
Why should lots of them suddenly start leaping from the sea?
One wild guess on my part:
The south-easter usually blows the warm surface-water off the bay, and the cold water wells up from the bottom. Does this activate the whales? Some-one more with more patience than I can muster needs to keep notes on this point. It may be a very shallow point though, because this whale outside stands on his/her head and stirs up sand sometimes, while the tail is still visible. It wouldn’t need to jump or dive to sample all temperatures when swimming near the edges of the bay.
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