The whales are coming in hot. There’s a pod of at least six humpbacks, which we can count from their plumes of spray.
They’re travelling fast and close to the surface, huffing as they race past the mouth of Jervis Bay, on the NSW south coast.
“Quick! Get ready! Wetsuits on, let’s get on the line,” urges our skipper and guide Dylan Boag. And that is how I find myself clinging to a fluoro-yellow, nylon rope called the mermaid line, the humpback pod racing toward our group of six swimmers.
Whale migration periods offer a chance to see whales like never before.
“Hold!” calls our dive guide Elizabeth Peabody, leading us in the water. “Hold the line!”
Then, the noise. It’s a roiling, boiling, thunderous thrum that passes through my blood, as the equivalent of a dozen double-decker buses bear down on us.
“Is this wise?” I ask myself out loud.
“It’s mystical,” shouts Trish, a veteran of marine swims, over the roar of the ocean.
On Elizabeth’s command, we let go of the line, the boat moves away, and we are left bobbing in 60-metre deep water, waiting. The theory is that the whales will pass beneath us.
“Look down exactly when I tell you,” instructs Elizabeth. “You’d be surprised how many people don’t, then they miss the entire event.”
Prime whale spotting … the headland at Bannisters by the Sea.
I wouldn’t be surprised. All my life, I have missed seeing whales. While others are snapping them breaching and “mugging” – whale slang for a friendly close-up peek – I’ve looked past the 30,000 kilogram mammals on whale-watching tours and swims from Mexico to Tonga to Australia. And so, unfeasibly, I find myself swimming into the humpback highway. There is nothing but the rolling seas and our own adrenaline.
At Elizabeth’s command, we stop, we huddle. And the whales thunder past, intent on their route north. Enormous and agile, they’ve no time for humans and our insignificant desires. They know we are there, they simply ignore us.
And then they are gone, steaming their way north toward their warm-water mating and calving grounds. All that remains is me and my question: should I even be here?
Playful seals during the dive.
For many marine scientists and wildlife advocates, no whale swim is a good swim. “There’s strong scientific evidence to support the fact that swimming with whales and their calves impacts the population levels, and the calves are not feeding while they’re dodging whale swimmers,” says David Donnelly, of the Victorian-based Dolphin Research Institute. “Whale swims are highly questionable if not done ethically.”
Swimming with whales as a tourist activity is in its infancy in Australia and registered whale swims occur in only a handful of locations: with humpbacks in Ningaloo Marine Park in Western Australia, Noosa and Hervey Bay in southern Queensland and Coffs Harbour and Jervis Bay in NSW. The Ribbon Reefs on the Great Barrier Reef are the only place in the world where you can swim with dwarf minke whales.
The regulations guiding whale interaction differ between states. In NSW, boats must keep 100 metres from whales, and swimmers 30 metres away, while jetskis get a special mention, with a 300-metre exclusion zone.
However, unlike such countries as Tonga, all Australian states forbid swimming with calves, particularly in the humpback nursery in Hervey Bay and southern right whales’ creche in Logans Beach, off Warrnambool.
Like climbing Uluru or cruising into Venice, these are conversations we travellers need to have.
“Whale tourism is not going to stop, so how can we make it better for the whales, first of all, and also for humans?” asks Dr Vanessa Pirotta. A whale scientist based at Macquarie University, she is also on our whale swim adventure, a package available through boutique hotel Bannisters by the Sea in Mollymook on the NSW south coast.
As we talk, guide Dylan drops a hydrophone, basically a marine microphone, over the side of the boat and through a speaker, we tune into “whale FM”. With Dr Pirotta translating, and doing some pretty good whale impersonations, we hear the humpbacks’ high-frequency hissing before a pod of showy dolphins butt in with excited chittering, appearing on our bow wave shortly after. As they chat, we continue our own conversation about the ethics of swimming with whales.
Humpback whale off Beecroft Peninsula, the northern headland of Jervis Bay.
“For an ethical swim, the interaction has to be on their terms,” says Dylan, who with his wife, Lara, founded Woebegone Freedive in 2018, after working abroad as a scuba and, later, freediving instructor.
“My experience from working overseas, especially in developing countries, is that when someone guarantees a wildlife interaction, they’re usually doing something to ensure it – hand feeding, so the animals will turn up, or holding animals in captivity until the tourists arrive.
“We don’t chase whales. If they don’t want to swim with you, they will just avoid you,” he says. “Chasing is threatening. You have to let them come to you. It’s usually the case that they get really interested and think, ‘Oh, what’s going on over there? Let’s go and have a look!’”
So, back to our swim – why didn’t they stop? And here’s the beauty of having a wetsuit-clad whale scientist beside you. Dr Pirotta suggests it might have been a “competition pod” or “heat run”, where a bunch of boys are chasing a single female who has dropped the memo that she’s ready to mate.
“They were powering through! They knew we were there, and they didn’t give a hoot!” she says.
Retrospectively, I’m thankful for the outcome. After all, who wants to be in the path of a fleet of sexually excited double-decker buses?
It was while working in Mexico that Dylan and Lara could see the power of eco-tourism. “The [local] community was quite poor, but the diving was incredible and dive masters were earning more than doctors and lawyers. And for that reason, they fiercely protected their marine parks,” says Dylan, over lunch at Rick Stein’s restaurant in Bannisters hotel, as yet more whales swim past.
“When it’s done properly, eco-tourism can benefit the whole community and the marine wildlife.”
That lesson is applicable in Australia. Byron Bay, the poster town for peace, closed its whaling company in 1962, and Australia legislated to end slaughtering whales and to protect them in only 1979, a year after the last whaling station, in Albany, in Western Australia, finally closed.
By the end of Australia’s bloody whale hunts, it’s estimated less than 200 humpbacks survived on the east coast. Today, the scientific community puts that east coast population at between 30,000 and 40,000, and growing up to 10 per cent each year.
In a clear case of righteous retribution, Albany now makes its money on whale-watching tours, as humpbacks continue to follow a signposted route along the south coast of Australia, splitting west to the Kimberley or up the east coast on a 10,000 kilometre return journey from Antarctica to northern Australia for six months of each year, between May and November.
And with the rise in whales’ visibility, so too our own curiosity rises.
“We interact with everything, it’s what humans do,” says Dylan, as we clamber back on board after a swim with local seals. “It’s a positive thing to have these interactions. People swimming with whales has a flow-on effect for people caring for the animals.”
You might glimpse migrating whales during a stay at Bannisters By the Sea in Mollymook.
“It is people’s livelihood, so we need to ask how we manage this,” adds Vanessa. “Woebegone is very passionate and respectful with the animals.”
She also notes that in different locations, whales are doing different things – a whale swim in Queensland, at the end of the great migration when the whales are kicking back in warmer waters, will be markedly different to a NSW south coast swim, which is akin to sticking your thumb out on a busy highway and hoping for a lift.
“It’s not a zoo, it’s not an aquarium,” says dive guide Elizabeth. “If we get to swim with whales, it makes my day too because it’s not something that happens every day for me, either,” she says. “There’s still a bit of mystery about whales.”
The details
Tour
Bannisters by the Sea’s Mollymook Migration two-night package includes breakfast, dinner at Rick Stein’s seafood restaurant and a six-hour whale expedition with Woebegone Freedive, costs $1739 for two people. See bannisters.com.au
Swim
Woebegone Freedive runs whale swims between June and July, and September and October from Jervis Bay. See woebegone.com.au
Read
Humpback Highway by Dr Vanessa Pirotta is published by NewSouth. See vanessapirotta.com
More
The writer was a guest of Bannisters By the Sea. See bannisters.com.au