A Port Macquarie photographer says capturing vision of a tightly packed pod of 11 whales off the NSW mid-north coast was “something special”.<\/p>\n
Drone operator Alex McNaught was tipped off by veteran whale spotter Leigh Mansfield on Monday.<\/p>\n
He launched a drone off Rocky Beach and then Tacking Point, filming a large whale pod heading south at speed in a tight formation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A heat run of male humpbacks crests for a quick breath in the race to a female on heat. (Supplied: Alex McNaught)<\/p>\n
“My guess would be in something like a mating pursuit, [as] that’s when you see a group of males put on a burst of speed,” Mr McNaught said.<\/p>\n
“You could see them churning the water, there were many puffs, as they were breathing hard and moving fast.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Alex McNaught flies his camera drones up to a kilometre above migrating whales. (Supplied: Alex McNaught)<\/p>\n
“I had a difficult time counting them at first, because my [drone camera] screen was absolutely full of whales.”<\/p>\n
For the past 20 years, Mr Mansfield has worked as a whale spotter with a local cruise company and volunteered for ORRCA, the Organisation for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia.<\/p>\n
He has witnessed the contest for a mating opportunity at the end of a pursuit, known as a “heat run”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Leigh Mansfield estimates he spots 15,000 whales each season. (ABC Mid North Coast: Emma Siossian)<\/p>\n
“Generally you will get these pods of between five and 10 males, because they can sense a female on heat and they will try to get to that female as quick as they can,” Mr Mansfield said.<\/p>\n
“The males actually fight each other and they could kill each other, that’s how hard they hit each other with their tails and their bodies.”<\/p>\n
October is a peak month on the NSW mid-north coast to view the humpbacks’ southern migration to the krill fields of Antarctica.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A large pod of male humpbacks speeds after a female on heat. (Supplied: Alex McNaught)<\/p>\n
“You actually need to look from the shoreline out, as you can have whales swimming 50 metres past you at this time of year, in just 5 metres of water,” Mr Mansfield said.<\/p>\n
He said mothers shepherded their calves through shallower waters to avoid predators.<\/p>\n
“Killer whales do come up the coast to Queensland,” Mr Mansfield said.<\/p>\n
“We did sight three [killer whale] pods going north this year because they love [eating] the tongue on these newborn babies.”<\/p>\n
University of Queensland associate professor in animal behaviour Rebecca Dunlop has seen pursuit pods grow in number during her 20 years researching the humpbacks’ southern migration.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rebecca Dunlop listens to whale song. (Supplied: Rebecca Dunlop)<\/p>\n
“When I first started working, you would see the odd competitive groups going through,” Associate Professor Dunlop said.<\/p>\n
“But even that would be only four or five animals at maximum and you would see them, if you were lucky, only once per season.<\/p>\n
“Now we’ve got so many whales migrating, they are forming these big pods of upwards of 10 animals \u2026 a lot more common than even a few years ago,” she said.<\/p>\n
Associate Professor Dunlop said forming competitive groups was typical whale behaviour when a female was in oestrus or ready to mate.<\/p>\n
“Where you get a number of whales chasing a female with her calf, it is dangerous for the calf, so she [the mother] will try and avoid these interactions where she can,” she said.<\/p>\n
“She’ll swim with him [the calf] and breathe when he breathes and she will keep him very close, but he can get caught up in it sometimes, so it is actually dangerous for the calf.”<\/p>\n
The trigger for the pursuit is still not known.<\/p>\n
“If she is in oestrus, I think she just makes certain sounds and that’s probably what is attracting them in.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Large competitive pods of humpback whales pursuing a female are now more common. (Supplied: Alex McNaught)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Port Macquarie photographer says capturing vision of a tightly packed pod of 11 whales off the NSW…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[81833,81830,81828,81834,8849,81831,90,81832,56,54,55,22116,81829,11299,4407],"class_list":{"0":"post-185229","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-alex-mcnaught","9":"tag-drone-photography","10":"tag-humpback-highway","11":"tag-humpbacks","12":"tag-orrca","13":"tag-point-plomer","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-tacking-point","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom","19":"tag-whale-migration","20":"tag-whale-pod","21":"tag-whales","22":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}