An adventure beyond Jervis Bay’s coast out into the unruly Pacific Ocean in search of Humpback Whales and the chance to swim with them.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY MARLON QUINN
It didn’t matter that the sea was unruly. Two metre deep troughs, maybe bigger. Cross swell and curling lips of occasional white water. The energy of adventure consumed us all.
We motley dozen or so, were on a mission out into the wild winter ocean to have the opportunity to perhaps encounter a Humpback Whale migrating south. Even better, we might even be in the water with it, garishly staring into its eye as we bobbed around in all manner of neoprene, shoving and thrusting all levels of camera tech towards it.
First time adventurers, the anticipation is feverish. Eager bodily movements, much smiling revealing white teeth. Eyes that implore you to share the unknown potential, and effervescent chatter and mingling that fuels the bond of this voyage out beyond the safe waters of the harbour and out into an ocean of dreams and deep desires.
I knew the drill. The thousands of seal and dolphin eco charter tours I’ve skippered in Port Phillip Bay, for those uninitiated to the perils of wildlife, in that, no, they don’t turn up at a certain time, and no, they are not guaranteed to be seen. And more no, they are not guaranteed to be in a mood where they flip and flop all about the boat and your body, as if straight from the pool at Seaworld. I learned on the high seas, it’s realistic to not see anything. Marine animals are not out there in the ocean waiting for we humans to turn up, and when we do, they have not been rehearsing their special show for us.
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The killer thing is, that is exactly why, when you are out there on a boat, moving about the ocean, and lo and behold, a marine animal reveals itself, and then, with the mood that it’s in, it does whatever the hell it likes, it’s absolute magic! Interacting, or not. Leaping out of the water constantly. Maniacally flipping and splashing. Or, doing what I like to call the D&D, aka Dive and Disappear.
Every single random encounter, it’s like the first time every time, because no encounter is ever the same. No matter if it was dull as hell, just exploring the grand extensive nothingness. There is something about that, that knocks me for six.
I’ve spent eight hours on a rigid inflatable boat (RIB) driving straight off Wilson’s Prom towards Tasmania in the middle of the notorious Bass Strait, and held a strict search pattern halfway between the coast and the island, some 30 nautical miles from anywhere, nowhere, and somewhere, for hours. Traipsing up and back, out and around, simply to observe what’s out there, for scientific purposes. We identified sea birds, common dolphins, a few fur seals, occasional penguins, and little else. But just because we saw nothing big out there that day, it doesn’t mean it wasn’t a superhighway of extreme marine action the next day, of course, when we weren’t there to see it.
It’s why, being front and centre for this voyage out into the ocean with the intention of seeing a whale in the wild, and having the potential to swim with it, I was just as excited as the new folks on board that were there for their very first time.
The real thrill of taking a boat tour that intends to see dolphins, whales, whale sharks, or sea birds, is the fact that you’re out there in the wild oceans themselves. That is enough.
It’s absolutely incredible. To be on this vessel, commanded by people who live and breathe the ocean and the insanity of the conditions and weather, as many days of the year as they can. Through the heat and ridiculous UV glare of the summer, to the calm and joyful Autumn glow that seems like only one month long, not three. The cold brisk biting winds of Winter, providing horizon to horizon blue sky panoramas that you could sell as the best summer days on the ocean. Before the wild winds and turbulence of Spring sends you into a spin, trying your darnedest to deal with the constant gales and fluctuating temperatures, only to then navigate the relief of the calm and warming weather windows that tickle your urges for summer to hurry up and make way.
The rolling seas, they rocked the boat. And some of the stomachs.
Leaving the relatively calm waters of the bay minutes earlier, we were now out beyond the tall Permian sedimentary rock of the Beecroft Peninsula, cliff faces that form the southernmost extent of the Sydney basin. These stunning sheer structures of sandstone, siltstone and conglomerates date back 225-280 million years, and in our modern age of developed sea-going craft, we get to see them from barely metres away as we sail over the Tasman Sea and broader Pacific Ocean.
Already my insignificance is paling into the magnitude of a fine dust particle of a grain of sand. This life numbered in years, and decades if we’re lucky, on this tiny tick of the clock single day in a lifetime, it holds the importance of a potentially one-time-only lifetime chance to visit this territory and to see a Humpback Whale cruising by.
The threat of applying stratospheric proportioned expectations to this whale sighting, it’s real. But compared to those relics of cliffs, our Humpback friends are relatively new additions, emerging 6-10 million years prior to us in the late Miocene epoch, so in reality, putting some kind of essential necessity on this moment, that is so infinitesimally small, it’s a bit crackers in the scheme of existentialism.
It is but a rising soft fascination that emerges, from deep inside somewhere ancient within the body – unlike that flickering smartphone screen shoving new stimuli every second, out on the ocean, there’s no single demand for attention, just a gentle scanning of eyes constantly across the horizon. No expectations, but still, looking deliberately into the distance, hoping and wanting for a spout, a tail, a fin, a curved dark movement and silhouette that’s not a wave. The unpredictability of it is just like social media, only better, because it’s real. Nature’s algorithm, you never know what you’re going to get, but you’re going to get something.
Instead of 4 hours doom scrolling on the couch, you’re spending hours on a moving boat, fixed in a single setting, like a lounge room with a hull. The external environment constantly moves, changing perspective with each tip and rise over the waves. The air out the window, it cools, warms, wets and dries, depending on the general direction the bow is heading.
Together we all continuously scanned outwards, hoping, wondering, waiting. Occasionally you’d swing your eyes inwards, catching the glimpse of others also swinging inwards, to subtly check the energy of the adventure. Tiny little knowing glances, meeting of understanding translated through the warming relaxed upturn of the corner of lips. The raising of eyelashes and pupils widening with glee in reply to a new report of a spout just seen in the distance.
Little was spoken between, in words. But we didn’t need to. Our bodies and spirit carried all the interconnected vibes we needed to become so lost in this floating cocoon riding the dark blue waters of the Pacific Ocean in search of cetaceans the same size as our boat.
Our heading pitched and flopped us slowly over the swell. Seated at the front, my abdomen tried to tell me it was just the same as skating in the skateboard bowls, rising and falling up and down the curved concrete transitions, metres at a time. Like a bird on a branch swaying in the wind, without conscious application, my body sought to smooth out the ride, ducking for the rises, and extending for the falls, keeping my head relatively still and maintained on the best constant trajectory it could, mimicking the Kookaburra’s head as it fixes on potential prey whilst its body perched on a thin branch bobs around feverishly in the gusts.
To the non-skaters on board, the ride was rough. Urging stomachs to surrender their contents back to the sea. The clammy skin restrained in a glass greenhouse that it cannot possibly grow out from. Pinkish hues turn pasty, then shades of green. The motion sickness becoming a hell worthy of a new destiny that was never part of the initial plan.
We tracked closer to the spout.
Our speed slowed to a pedestrian walk. The loft of the waves became more like a saunter over sand dunes than the first few jumps on the end of the diving springboard.
We’d rise up and over the crest of the wave to keep a lookout for the spout that appeared to be becoming closer, and a touch more regular.
In the troughs, we’d stare down at our fins on the deck, fidget softly with our mask and snorkel, and hurriedly faff with wetsuit zippers and neck cuffs.
Dylan, our guide and Zen Master freediving guy, master skipper, and Woebegone family owner with Lara and beautiful children in Jervis Bay, excitedly told us to get prepared. This could be our chance to see this huge beast eye to eye in the water. He’d already set up the floating safety rope out of the back of the vessel, the mermaid line, and was poised near the back swim deck and dive ladder, mask and snorkel on his head, feet planted already in his fins.
The vessel retired to a drift, the bow languidly descending the softer curve of the back of the wave. I heard a shout from where Dylan was standing seconds earlier.
Directly out the window in front of me the huge upside-down black crescent of the whale speared effortlessly toward the starboard side, barely five metres away, it’s muscular tail trunk and broad tail slipping under the surface silently, with only the white wash and bubbles from its wake leaving a familiar footprint on the sea surface. The black shape moved under us and curled around to steady its trajectory.
From the corner of my eye I could see the flash of a pink rash vest some 10 metres off the stern, bobbing next to the styrofoam spherical float at the end of the mermaid line. Spouts of water shot out through Dylan’s snorkel, accompanied by loud vocalisations that anyone could interpret to mean, “hurry up and get in the water!”.
Nearby the snorkel spout was echoed by the intense exhalation and blow of the whale as it breached the surface and continued the slow inquisition of the bright pink body and the 12m long craft bobbing slowly on the surface.
The bodies on board were caught between stuck watching this awesome visit unfold near and upon the surface – the grace and power of this massive Humpback Whale mesmerising all the eyes, wanting for time to slow and bend into forever – and the bodies tried to hurriedly finish the donning of fins, masks and snorkels, whilst urging legs and arms to get their neurons firing towards the back swim deck in the right now.
Confounding the presence of a whale is. The mind unable to process the gravity and gargantuan nature of this prehistoric graceful beast finding presence in our little lives out offshore in the deep ocean. Trying to understand the movements, the direction, and implore a meeting of the eyes. It’s paralysing.
A slow shuffle of 12 pairs of feet and equipment made it towards the ladder. My feet were ambling at the back of the queue.
The cascade of black wetsuit clad bodies plunged into the blue water haphazardly. Heavy forced inhalations and exhalations sought to overpower the rush of cold sea water on faces and hands. Swiftly the swimmers aligned into a thread of eagerness, clasping the mermaid line with one hand, the other thrusting camera lenses in front, legs driving fins to orient this way and that, as big enthusiastic eyes looked through masks into the jellyfish littered dark blue water below.
The whale was gone.
The water was inviting, a cool but not cold temperature, comfortable enough for me dressed only in my board shorts. Sensing the salty sea upon my skin, my body immediately surrenders into ease, my heart rate automatically slowing, and the mind opening to a broad vast clarity, only interested in the nature of the environment now surrounding me.
A subtle dragging of current encouraged me away from the mermaid line, and further from the boat. Enough of a push to have to stay aware of, occasionally raising my face from the water, looking up to regain my bearings, and maintain a constant slow finning effort to return the metres away that the sea subtly would clutch me.
The water was clearer 2-metres underneath the surface, the churn of the swell and ocean mystifying the surface layer.
In an instant, 20 minutes had passed by. Floating and bobbing around together as we did. In a shared glory, even without the whale obviously present, there was no hurry to return to the boat. This timeless passing of immersion, in the crypt of ocean spirits that knew us better than we knew them, the vastness has a way of captivating you. Learning about something so foreign that can’t be translated in books, reels or photos. The anticipation of the whale returning remains resident, but its power wanes in contrast to the unique connection our bodies and mind develop when we’re in the middle of nowhere together, swimming in a place with absolutely nothing around, on an adventure into an unruly environment only the dedicated and curious few dare to enter.
Inverting and allowing my body to softly enter the underneath of the ocean, the perspective at two, three and five metres deep provided a welcoming. Suspended in the quiet noise of oceanic sounds, the clear distinction of whale song and vocalisations rejoiced in my ears and vibrated all about my soul in a rapturous symphony. The innate knowing rises up through me and in response the most wonderful smile arrives across lips. A magical awe transcends any thoughts, desires, expectations or contemplations, to clarify not one thing has your attention right now in this moment, you’re firmly entrenched in a fabric of exotic Nature, cradling you in a time of life never replicable.
Slowly the cold creeps in. Neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, but the body knows it’s time to leave the sonic delights of whale song.
In a regular procession back along the mermaid line and clambering up the ladder, the vividness wicks away as the droplets of water from ankle cuffs amass in puddles on the deck.
A kind of peace hovers within chests, and about the confines of the seats and windows of the boat. The beginnings of minds returning to life in the air, with thoughts and preoccupations idling over once more.
Inside we all collectively wonder, will we have another sighting? Will there be another chance to swim? Can we do it all again, please!
The shivers and shakes settle in as the warm blood in the core begins to mix with the cold extremities of limbs. Cloaked in wet wetsuits, the warmth of the inner layer against skin suggests a comfortable recess, until the wind begins to course over the cool outer layer.
Whilst minds and bodies steady, and sea water streams meander down the deck in tiny cooperatives, the timely receipt of big warm fluffy jackets into cool hands rescues unfamiliar minds from cooling dreams. Comfortably wrapped in bright cosy thermo fleece big black jackets, the minds and eyes begin to peer outwards, again gazing across the rolling sea, looking intently for any sign of spouts, breaches and whale tails curling craftily across the horizon.
In the background, steaming hot water rises into the air, pluming wafts of coffee, ginger tea and hot chocolate aromas from enamel mugs, ready to be clasped in fidgety fingers and cradled in malleable hands.
Little is spoken, the home made vegan banana bread squares and acute slices of watermelon stealing the attention of minds and wandering thoughts that brim with appetite for another plunge into this deep escape from that other life’s terrestrial ways awaiting back at the dock.
— Living breath by breath in fluid movement outdoors.
*Marlon travelled as a guest of Woebegone Dive, Jervis Bay NSW.
To join a Woebegone snorkelling, freediving or scuba dive tour, book easily online at: https://www.woebegone.com.au/
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