A group of tourists on a snorkeling excursion off Southport, Australia encountered a mini pod of three humpback whales when one of their guides got launched into the air by a flick of tail.
Aqua Adventures offers incredible Gold Coast whale adventures presenting paying customers the opportunity to jump in the water with humpbacks or observe them their vessels “Salty Kiss” or “Big Blue”:
“Everything we do during this experience is at the whales discretion and what ever happens simply happens.”
On this day a humpback whale’s discretion was to lift an Aqua Adventure guide a meter out of the water after it came in contact with the tether rope that swimmers were hanging onto.
“We think the rope we were hanging onto touched the whales tale and just like we would flick away an unfamiliar touch, so did the whale, there just happened to be human above him!”
The waters off the Gold Coast are part of a migration route known as the “Humpback Highway” that sees thousands of humpback whales traveling from the waters of Antarctica to the warmer breeding grounds off the coast of Queensland. This migration is one of the longest of animal taking humpback over 6000 miles annually.