So I was on vacation and was in far North Queensland and going on a Great Barrier Reef snorkeling tour. Unfortunately, the reef, is completely largely bleached, but we ended up seeing a pod of about nine or so humpback whales that were migrating by.
And I think it’s just been so, such a long time since I have been able to see a whale in person. There’s a few right whale, southern right whale sightings and sometimes humpbacks down here in Adelaide in South Australia. But just being able to see them breaching up close and some of them were doing the whole, I’m sure you’re familiar with the bubble net trick where they have, where they trap a whole bunch of krill in there in this massive bubble net and then they just consume everything.
And we were able to, you know, we’ve got less than 50 meters from them and it was just phenomenal to be able to see that, up close.
But it’s all, it’s sort of ironic just to sort of juxtapose like the whales are recovering quite strongly here in Australia, but it’s at the same time as these coral reefs which are another sentinel indicator of climate change that are, there’s heavy, heavy bleaching. So, it’s this, you know, double edged sword almost that just sort of keeps us, it keeps me grounded at least. But it’s awe inspiring and both devastating at the same time.
And because I was looking for them and you know, because I spotted them a kilometer or so off I could, you know, see the breach, see at least the vapor from the breaching at least. And was like, hey, there’s like a bunch of whales over there.
And so we took an hour and a quarter detour and got two free beers out of it. You know, got to nerd out and tell people about my research, that’s like every grad student’s dream. Will nerd out about research for beer.
-Nick
This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 84 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here
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