Well don't get too impressed. This photograph was actually taken with my camera but it's a close up of a postcard! I did indeed go swimming with humpback whales today, in Vava'u, Tonga to be precise. However it seems that the mother and calf that we were following all day were a little bit more wary than most humpback whales usually are. I did manage to catch a fleeting glimpse of the two whales though and that was worth it!
Tonga is apparently one of the few places in the world where you can swim with whales. They spend the months between June and November around the islands of Tonga to mate then they make the long journey to Antarctica to feed for the season.
As I said earlier, we were lucky enough to find a mother and calf but it was unfortunate that the mother was so protective. Apparently if you get a more relaxed parent (you know: a more progressive, liberal whale!) then they usually sit back and let the calf play with the swimmers since, like most young mammals, baby whales are naturally inquisitive. Perhaps I'll come back again and get lucky next time.
We ended up chasing the same whale for the whole day. The search boat that was sent out ahead of us located the pair very quickly and reported them but we had trouble getting close enough to be able to see. It also didn't help that the visibility was low, although it was still fairly clear water.
The technique was to slowly approach with the boat while they were resting near the surface and then quietly slip into the water and see if we could get close enough to identify them. After a few failed attempts we managed to get fairly close. They took us into the water (only 5 at a time) and we started to approach them.
The only problem is that a whale can glide effortlessly through the water very fast with very little exertion, people are not exactly quite so efficient when in water. The whales began to swim away but I wasn't ready to let them go yet! I swam as hard as I could and pushed myself to near exhaustion trying to catch up with them. Leaving most of the other snorkelers behind I managed to just get close enough to catch a brief sighting of both the mother and calf and take a couple of photos on my underwater camera.
So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the photographs came out but it might be a while before I can get them developed. I've still got most of the roll of film left and the ship doesn't even develop film cameras at all, everyone is going digital. I'm going to see if any of the other swimmers got any good photos but from what I heard, some of our group didn't even see the whales and many of those that did only got a similarly quick glance at the creatures.
Perhaps later I'll have some more photos here but for now I'll just have to content myself with having a good day chasing whales and hope that next time I'll get lucky and be able to get closer to these amazing creatures.
The whale that just wouldn't cooperate!
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