Tag:rocks
Day Three of our South Coast road trip brought us to the highlight (for me) of our journey. And the main reason we were in Eden – the Eden Whale Watching cruise on Twofold Bay.
Whale Watching Cruise
Cat Balou run cruises all year round from a 72 seat vessel, but September to November is whale watching time during the Humpback Whale southern migration. Whales travel a distance of around 10,000km on their migration. While the whales pass Eden on both the southern and northern migration, it’s only on the southern migration that they are close enough to shore to see. Most are only seen further out to sea on the northern migration. And only a very few venture into Twofold Bay.
Twofold Bay
Leaving Snug Cove at Eden Wharf, we cruised around the Bay for three and half hours. We sighted pods of dolphins, a few seals and three whales. Twofold Bay is one of the deepest natural harbours globally. It is also the only port on the Sapphire Coast with direct ocean access and no sand bars to negotiate.
Ben Boyd Tower
From the 1820s until 1930, men in open wooden boats hunted whales in Twofold Bay. A pack of killer whales assisted them. Ben Boyd Tower was initially planned as a lighthouse but was used as a whale spotting tower. After being hunted close to extinction, the population was estimated at 200 in 1962. In 2013 the whale population was estimated at 14,000 and increased by 11% a year.
I had been hoping to get a whale leaping out of the water, but they weren’t cooperating that day. We had to settle for several ‘breachings’ where the whale generates enough upward force with its powerful tail flukes to lift two-thirds of its body out of the water before coming down in a thunderous splash.
The underpart of each tail fluke is like a ‘fingerprint’ with no two tails having the same markings. Whale Facts