Total Eco Adventures

Whale watching at Broulee, on the South Coast of NSW near Batemans Bay, has been extremely active over the past few weeks. There have been numerous Southern Right Whales off the rocks at South Broulee and in Broulee Bay with easy viewing off the rocks and beach.

As we did not have a sea kayak tour happening that day, to get a closer view we paddled out on Stand Up Paddle (SUP) boards into Broulee Bay to a lone Southern Right Whale that was hanging about. Keeping our distance according to eco-tourism guidelines, the whale seemed pretty disinterested in us and started a slow journey along the beach.

After accompanying the whale for a while we decided to sit down on our SUP boards to take a rest and watch another approaching whale. As soon as we had sat down the whale we had been following turned around and headed back towards us, straight back at us actually... until we began to get a little unnerved and began to paddle away.

The whale then followed us and repeatedly dove beneath us as we paddled in circles trying to stay away from the bulking mass as we were nervous about being bumped off our boards. For about 20 minutes this game continued and we slowly began to grow comfortable with the whale coming right up close to us. (We couldn't remember if we were whale watching or the whales were watching us!)

After a few close encounters and as we grew comfortable, the whale seemed to sense our change and began to show off. This involved tail slaps, fin slaps, spy hopping (raising the head above the water) and deep dives only a few metres away from us.

The whole experience was quite magical and the sort of encounter that you can only dream of. Apart from looking at the photos we managed to take some of the experience on video, which also still seems unreal thinking back on it.

To see more check out the video stream on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg3Dk-6t-c4