First Trip To Coffs Harbour This journal contains a selection of photos taken during my first trip to Coffs Harbour, a regional city located at the east coast of Australia, in the northern part of New South Wales.

My Scholarship entry - A 'place' I have visited

AUSTRALIA | Monday, 14 January 2013 | Views [413] | View Larger Image

After the calf had performed a few full breaches, the mother humpback whale did hers. It happened only a few hundred metres away from our cruise. It was spectacular to watch. You can hear everyone on the cruise were cheering and enjoying this spectacle in awe. With this full breach, the mother whale had landed on her back. I thought that how a full breach is normally performed by humpback whales. We humans tend to anthropomorphise, and this tendency of ours gave me the thought, that after how the mother whale saw her own calf do a few full breaches, she performed hers right after, as to demonstrate how a full breach should be done.

In 2009, during the Labour Day long weekend, my girlfriend and I had our first trip to Coffs Harbour. I knew about the migration of humpback whales along the Eastern Australian Current, and Coffs Harbour is a good place for whale watching. Having watched many documentaries, I know that humpback whales occasionally display their breaching behaviour.

So one of the things I have set out to do was to capture at least one photo of a full breach. Obviously these are wild animals, and with wildlife photography, you will need immense patience and a bit of luck.

We set out of the harbour early in the morning, and throughout the most of the trip, all I saw were the backs and tails of humpback whales. Not a single breach was seen. As we were heading back to the wharf, I was packing my camera gears away, suddenly, a mother humpback whale and her calf surfaced near our cruise. I quickly took my camera gears out and capture the calf doing a full breach, belly-flop style.

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As the mother humpback whale dived back into the sea, the incredibly loud noise and the enormous amount of splashes made, gave me a physical sense of the sheer immensity of their size and weight. This happened so close to our cruise, it was almost as if I could reach out for the splashes with my hand.

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First Trip To Coffs Harbour This journal contains a selection of photos taken during my first trip to Coffs Harbour, a regional city located at the east coast of Australia, in the northern part of New South Wales.

My Scholarship entry - A 'place' I have visited

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