Rare glimpse of giants having whale of a time

Rare images of a courtship between whale sharks have been captured off Western Australia’s Ningaloo Reef.

A tourist dives with a whale shark off Ningaloo Reef. Picture: Michael Husband

As her whale-spotter plane flew over Australia’s longest reef ­expanse at Ningaloo, 1200km north of Perth, pilot Tiffany Klein spotted the familiar outline of whale sharks and relayed their ­location to the ecotourism boats bobbing in the water beneath her.

But then she saw a pair of the giants, one male about 10m long and the other half his size, acting oddly.

“The big one went underneath the female. It turned upside down, which a whale shark normally never does. It was thrashing around in the water. I’d never seen it before.”

After a minute or two Klein saw the male try again, gliding into position and trying to clasp his partner with his fins.

“They then both disappeared from view. Five minutes later the male shark resurfaced, acting ­really chilled out.”

What Klein and her CSIRO marine researcher colleague Richard Pillans captured last week on camera — her from above, him from a boat — were some of the few images of courtship by whale sharks recorded anywhere in the world. Neither Pillans nor Klein, both veteran whale watchers of nearly 10 years, had ever seen such ­behaviour.

The sight of whale sharks giving birth still eludes researchers worldwide; only a dead whale shark in Taiwan found to have more than 300 pups inside her body hints at incredible reproductive abilities.

It barely matters that Pillans thinks the pair’s lovemaking was futile because the female was too immature. It was the kind of spectacular sight that brings more than 30,000 tourists each year to the coast from Ningaloo to Coral Bay, where they pay about $385 each to swim — at a respectful distance — alongside the normally slow-moving whale sharks.

Such events are also the subject of scientific scrutiny by Pillans and the CSIRO’s Oceans and Atmosphere team, which is conducting a BHP-funded $5.4 million research project, Ningaloo Outlook, to gather new insights into Australia’s most pristine and accessible reef system.

Ningaloo is yielding secrets not known when it was ­accorded UNESCO World Heritage status in 2011. Pygmy blue whales and the rare omura’s whale were not on the list of marine animals believed to inhabit the reef’s ­lagoons or deep nearshore ­waters. In recent months, Klein has spotted both from her cockpit.

University of Tasmania whale expert Lyn Irvine says the sightings of pygmy blue whales, which grow to about 25m long, suggest the species is slowly recovering from decades of commercial whaling.

“They migrate from the Perth (offshore) canyon up to Indonesian deep waters to calve, ­although we don’t know exactly where.”

She says the recent sightings of smaller-sized omura’s whales — only named as a species in 2003 — “confirm they are on the WA coast, so it’s another case of whale secrets being revealed”.

“You wouldn’t think to find a new species of whale off any part of the Australian coast,” she says. “They are a big animal, it’s not like finding a new earthworm.”

The reef is a refuge for globally threatened mega-marine life, from sleek billfish to families of dugongs. Three Islands Whale Shark Dive boat owner Mick Husband says the diversity of Ningaloo marine life takes many visitors by surprise.

“By the end of the day, they are blown away … What’s normal to us is amazing to them,” Mr Husband said.