22nd June

It was with massive excitement that i heard a small voice through the radio say ‘There’s whales right by you’ as i returned from a dive lastweek. The shore marshal had noticed 2 humpbacks travelling south along the coast and had been following them for about half an hour; our first sighting of the season! Unfortunately we didn’t manage to spot them until we were on shore and had a slight height advantage but even from a distance it was enough to cheer me up no end. Following this first sighting we have started our whale monitoring programme and I finally made it over to the whale watch platform on Nosy Hao. A very impressive structure with probably the best view in the world, and certainly not a bad place to spend a morning. The weather has not been too great recently which doesn’t make for good whale sighting weather, as every wave resembles a surfacing fin, but although we were not lucky enough to have any sightings in our 2 hour stint, the slightly wet pirogue journey back to Andavadoaka and general feeling of having a 360 degree view of your surroundings made it a very enjoyable morning. Fingers crossed for a successful season.
25th June

Another sighting this morning- brilliant. We were off to a small dive site off shore, which incidentally we didnt manage to find as we drifted before we went down! Once we were all back on the boat feeling a bit subdued from the aborted dive we heard Marcellin’s cry of ‘baleine’ and the morning suddenly became much better! We watched a single humpback surface about 60m from the boat. After a cautious approach and a few more surfacings it then surfaced twice within about 20m of the boat before moving off again. Truly uplifting (Well i would say that being the cetacean lover, but it is certainly very magical when a creature that massive comes over to say hi!)

Sophie (Field Scienist)

Posted by Blue Ventures

Blue Ventures is an award winning marine conservation charity. We rebuild tropical fisheries with coastal communities. On our Beyond Conservation blog you can hear voices from the front line of marine conservation written by our staff and volunteers.

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