Under Melbourne’s busiest freeway, a couple of commuters took the scenic route into the city – two humpback whales, moseying under the West Gate Bridge for the first time in living memory.
The duo was spotted on Tuesday on Ports Victoria’s traffic cameras that monitor the Yarra River, the grainy stills showing the whales’ breaching fins, just enough to make drivers do a double take.
The humpback whale pair was spotted under the West Gate Bridge.
It is not uncommon for whales to frolic at the top end of Port Phillip Bay, near Williamstown and Port Melbourne, and even at the mouth of the Yarra River, Dolphin Research Institute research officer David Donnelly said.
“But to get up to the bridge is not something we’ve got a record of previously,” Donnelly said.
“Our records are well-kept for the last 10 years but sporadically date back to [1984]. We have quite a long history of visits of those animals.”
Whale visits to Port Phillip Bay vary from year to year. Hardly any of the animals appeared in the bay in 2024, compared with multiple visits a few years ago and again this year, Donnelly said.
The whales spotted under the West Gate first entered the bay over the weekend, the research officer said. On Monday, the pair were in Melbourne’s south-east, spotted playing in the waters off Parkdale beach on their way to Mentone.
“So we’ve been having them coming up and down the eastern seaboard, but they’ve also been in Corio Bay, and down through to Point Cook,” Donnelly said.