humpback whales
tonga | travelled in 2015 | posted on dec 13, 2015
at first, there is blue. nothing else than endless deep blue…
calming and scaring at the same time.
a huge shadow appears from the depth.
a young humpback whale on the way to the surface in order to breathe.
only a short moment later, two even bigger shapes emerge,
one being the mother, who is always around the calf.
every year around june, several hundred humpback whales leave their feeding grounds in the antarctica to come to the warm waters around tonga to mate and give birth to the calves. the mothers stay with their newborns in tongan waters for some months until the babies are strong enough for the 6,000 km journey back south.
so it is really easy to see whales when you are in tonga. just stand at the beach and wait for some minutes, and you will see them. sometimes they come really close to the land.
but tonga is also one of the few places on this planet where you can not only watch whales, but you can instead also snorkel with these impressive animals. swimming close to these gentle giants is an experience that is hard to describe - just by writing these lines, i get goosebumps.
and we had been extremely lucky with the whales. other travellers told us about their „whale experiences“. many of them were only able to swim with the whales for a few minutes - but still you could see the happiest smile in their faces when talking about it. we instead were able to swim with two groups of whales for about 20 minutes. after that, it was a no-brainer for us to repeat it the next day. and this second time, it was even better. at first, we met a group of five whales who constantly jumped out of the water in front of our boat. the second group of whales we approached stayed around our boat for almost one and a half hours without swimming away. it was just amazing one of the best experiences ever!
seeing the excitement of naite and marta who run the hideaway guesthouse in 'eua and who always join the travellers when they do the whale swimming, i guess this excitement does not fade, even if you have met whales many times. man, you two are so lucky, that you can do this again and again.
additional to the photos i shot, naite and marta allowed me to show some of their video material -
a big thank-you for that! and also thanks to kiko who brought us close the whales!
music by ketsa (freemusicarchive.org)
