For the second time in less than two weeks a photographer in Australia has captured images showing a humpback whale calf breaching completely free of the water.
While humpback whales are famous for breaching and other surface behaviors, the massive cetaceans rarely become totally airborne.
Rachelle Mackintosh captured the accompanying photo sequence Saturday for Merimbula Whale Watching. It was the 18-foot female calf’s first of many breaches near the vessel.
“Before that, she and her mum were very friendly and curious and kept coming over to the boat to say hi, and then suddenly this calf found her wings and boom – she was airborne!” Mackintosh told For The Win Outdoors.
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“After they breach once you can usually tell if they’re going to jump again by the way they dive down or do a slight flick of their tail, so I was able to get a few more photos of her subsequent jumps. But that first breach was her funniest and craziest!”
On Sept. 28, Mackintosh photographed another breaching calf whose entire body cleared the surface, while aboard a Go Whale Watching excursion off Sydney, 300 miles north of Merimbula.
Humpback whales are migrating from nursing and mating grounds off eastern Australia to summer feeding grounds off Antarctica, where they’ll spend months gorging on shrimp-like krill.
Mackintosh said Merimbula, in New South Wales, represents a resting area before the whales begin their long journey across the Southern Ocean.
She added that she has yet to photograph an adult humpback whale in a full body breach because that’s an especially rare phenomenon (humpback whales can weigh 50 tons).
“It’s mostly just the calves and juveniles who get all the way out like that,” Mackintosh said. “Some of the adults can get almost all the way out but it’s pretty rare to see that. I think full body breaching is more common during our [southern] migration because we get so many youngsters and they are learning and practicing their behaviors.”
–Images courtesy of Rachelle Mackintosh