# Qld: Saved by the whales (vid too). Laguna Bay 16Oct12



## sunshiner

Today's theme (cropped frame from video, sharpened up by Red. Thanks Red). See video link later.

When good offshore weather comes along I like to get out in the yak if at all possible. Today was such a day. I was aware that the fishing prospects were not good, but you never know around here, so at 0500 today when I awoke and checked Seabreeze I committed.









Launchtime. Wouldn't you have gone too, if you had the opportunity?

There was a guy baitfishing from the end of the groyne when I launched. He hadn't done any good but I did encourage him to get a yak, I think.

Cutting a long story short, I paddled out to Jew Shoal confirming on the way that my refit of the sounder in the new boat was working as hoped. That's another item ticked off the list. Conditions were great but in two hours of working SPs over much of the territory I hadn't had a touch. Still dead!

No sign of surface action, either. Even the local cormorant was eyeing me off hungrily. No whales, either. Then, snort! Behind me, as usual. Maybe there IS a whale around. Louder snort! Lines and drogue in, I spin the yak horizontally just in time to see black portions of a large-ish whale less than 100m behind me, travelling toward the east.









Whale #1

OK, that's my fun for the day, so I may as well head back toward Middle Groyne, trolling as I go, of course. Noting that there'd been a tiny bit of pelagic action recently around the river mouth I set course for that area only to come across the white rigid inflatable used by the whale researchers. On board was the male skipper with several lady researchers. They enviously ogled my yak, cameras in hand. I presume the yak was the object of their attention, although there's an outside chance they were ogling me, I suppose. Being used to such behaviour I thought nothing of it, but there could have been a touch of sexism there, from the ladies that is.

Anyway, close to where they were parked, two km from Middle Groyne, a large white triangular object was protruding from the surface. It looked exactly like the buoyant bow of a sunken boat but the chief researcher and boat skipper told me it was a female humpback and her calf, resting, as they do. I promised to not get too close and paddled gently toward it as it was on my planned track.









Resting, belly up, only the end of the tail protruding.

A couple of other kayakers showed up. They were not fishos and I didn't recognize any of them. Despite the law, these guys started to get a bit too close to the whales, certainly within 50m of them, but the whales were moving about just a little.









Both mother and calf, plus kayaker.

By now I'd got my big camera out. I almost always shoot video with the small camera but in this case I was shooting stills but the subject was a little too far away. Then the calf surfaced and started to swim around mum so I switched to "movie" on the big camera, which is in a waterproof case, and just started to follow the activity.

The calf nudged mum quite solidly and there was a splash, which I was quite pleased to see was right in my viewfinder, then mum got seriously annoyed and took off with a swirl in the 13m deep water. The camera was still going when she breached once, then again, before returning to more normal behaviour.





See the action in Laguna Bay today. And be wary of getting too close to whales!

As both creatures were now swirling around willy nilly I and the other kayakers decided to make ourselves scarce, so that was the show over for the day.

I paddled back to the groyne and picked up a beautiful little wave from just outside the wall, surfing it all the way in to the beach, hitting the sand hard enough with my skeg to bring me to a jolting stop. Bewdy! Now all I had to hope for was that the video I'd just shot on the camera I don't usually use for video was in focus. It was!

No fish, but what a compensatory experience. What a place to live!

Thanks fornreading AKFFers. Tight lines!


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## Frocklizard

Fantastic!!!! The new yak looks awesome


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## DennisT

Its a great time to be out on the water.

Nice work Kev. I saw a few on Saturday. Didnt have a camera on me - would have loved to take a few snaps (not of the whales - of Nick's (nad97) face when one popped up only a few metres from him :shock: )


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## seawind

Bloody brilliant Kev, I'm very envious.


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## tsea

Wow just magic!!!
cheers TC


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## Guest

I hate the whales and yes they did scare the crap out of me but everyone else got a good laugh out of it. that is a good vidio job


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## Qyak

Amazing! :shock:


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## killer

Love your work Sunshiner.

Thanks for that.

Cheers 
Killer.


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## Safa

Great vid mate keep em coming


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## Scott

Fantastic, thank you so much for sharing that


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## Evoids

Great video! Would have been amazing to see something so massive come shooting out of the water like that.


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## keza

Nice 'capture and release' Kev.


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## shiznic

Amazing vid, bloody well done!!


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## ben123

Wow, what an experience! Hope the fish start coming on the chew for you soon.


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## paulsod

You lucky [email protected]#TARD, that is fantastic. Who cares about the fish when your privileged to have seen that.
Great capture on the camera, Kevin.
Last year someone on here mentioned about a Mother Whale is feeding her Calf when her tail is in the air.
i actually saw one doing that at Brays last Year, but didn't go close and it appeared a a speck on the GoPro.
Cheers
Paul


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## RedPhoenix

Unfortunately, due to the change in ownership of this web site and the lack of response by the owners to my requests to remove my email address from all administrative-level notifications and functionality, I have decided to remove my posts on AKFF. Thank you for the great times, the fantastic learning experiences and the many many fish. If you are desperate for the old content of this particular post, it is available below base64 encoded and bzip2 compressed.

Red.

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QlpoOTFBWSZTWbYCqa8AABTXgAAQQIMACByAP//foCAAdQ1TR6Ieo0aNlGTTQDVT9Mqfo1Jmo9DRGNNqiAheH75lvAIb1TXW3PXZ4Md44z8qpOtKAkIPy1BFqw0u3qwxgIHIqxTOKrOUA5L7KUm5vSPIHwVoYZB5JO1d8ZYRFqw2WehJAxsGAb72l5KoIif0xj+LuSKcKEhbAVTXgA==


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## Ado

Wow Sunshiner. There's a few life points right there. You didn't need the shore break. You could have surfed the whale wash! Pity those twits got troo close in their kayaks. It gives us all a bad name.

They are finally in close down this way now. The ocean has been 14oC in shore and the whales have been out past Montague. Now they're coming in close and I'm seeing a pod each time I go to the lookout. Pity I can't get out there. I'd just love to see some from the water one day. Thanks for sharing.


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## sunshiner

RedPhoenix said:


> ...The general consensus was that you're a lucky mongrel. Red.


I have to admit that there's some luck involved. Luck that I'm still alive and active, mainly. But I think we make a lot of our own "luck". I could have stayed in bed and not gone out on my yak (luck?); I could have kerbed my natural curiosity and not paddled out of my way somewhat to see why the research vessel was hanging around (luck?); I always carry at least one waterproof camera capable of shooting stills and movie and practice with them a lot (luck?); I could have kept shooting stills instead of switching to movie just at the crucial moment (luck? instinct?); I could have been killed if the whale had decided to head in my direction (luck? probably!)

In six years' kayak fishing that's the second time I've been really close to a breaching whale and both times the whale breached twice. The first time I was hooked up to a reef fish at the time, and had my camera available but my "Fight or Flight" instinct kicked in and I got the hell out of there ASAP, with hooked up fish still trailing behind me. Still wakes me up at night, that one!

Thanks for the comments, AKFFers. Note the whale went from belly up, relaxed recline to airborne in 10 seconds. Don't get close to whales!

And thanks Red for sharpening the initial image for me, without my asking. Must do more of that myself!

Kev


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## RedPhoenix

Unfortunately, due to the change in ownership of this web site and the lack of response by the owners to my requests to remove my email address from all administrative-level notifications and functionality, I have decided to remove my posts on AKFF. Thank you for the great times, the fantastic learning experiences and the many many fish. If you are desperate for the old content of this particular post, it is available below base64 encoded and bzip2 compressed.

Red.

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QlpoOTFBWSZTWbtQbK8AABJfgAAQQKUACACsEAA+7/9gIABwY0xGEaYAAAaqfpiEmZMJNPSYNIZT5cHFq+i11JXxB87M8GYl7WAvGLkIA5MttCyXzJnJ5RfpffpTdudQQs/LVGRbPqjBgG0XQ2VIYWMQw4d32TaoDqmKA4eJMKFel5+aNxKR5fxdyRThQkLtQbK8


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## TheFishinMusician

That's just brilliant! Wow! 
I honestly thought that first pic was "shopped" until I saw the vid! 
What an expirence.


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## Dodge

Kev what a special moment that was mate, only looked at it yesterday and just amazed at your dress circle view.


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## SharkNett

How awesome to have such a great experience and the video to help you remember the details in years to come.


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## Artie

What a fantastic experience... Im still in awe when a Dolphin pod checks me out...I think Id embarress my self if I was close to that.... :shock: Great stuff Kev...


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