MY DAY ON THE WHALE TRAIL

As an amateur photographer captures this glorious image of a humpback whale, Matt Warren remembers his own brief encounter with one of Nature’s most majestic creatures

This awe-inspiring image was captured by amateur photographer, Bill Boulton, who witnessed the whales feeding on sardines in the shallow waters of San Luis Obispo, California.

'I was really lucky,' he said with admirable understatement.

I was equally fortunate to encounter a group of these magniƒcent creatures off the coast of southern Africa – and it is a memory I shall treasure for the rest of my life. It was a bright Monday morning in southern Mozambique – and we were in an open, in-
flatable boat about three miles out into the Indian Ocean. The water was dark blue and choppy, whipped up by a mild southerly wind.

One of the humpback whales Matt saw off Mozambique

And then the water shifted and swirled, a vast back cutting through the waves towards us. At ƒfirst this large female kept her distance. But she soon became more playful, more acrobatic, approaching the boat and slapping the water with her vast pectoral fins. And then she introduced her calf, a mere stripling that was easily larger than our boat. It rolled around, showed us its tail, of which it seemed to be enormously proud, and then, for a brief moment, caught my eye.

The first time you see eye-to-eye with a whale is like looking into a dark pool and having all that is ancient and wise and bold staring right back at you. Tears were shed.

In fact, it seemed that everyone was having so much fun that three more adults joined the party – and for a moment we were floating on a vast sea, in a tiny boat, surrounded by five gigantic whales. But they couldn't stay around for long. Despite weighing nearly 80,000lbs and growing to up to 52 feet in length, humpback whales often only eat during the summer months, when they feed on krill and small fish in the polar regions. They then migrate to the tropics, where they spend the winter breeding and giving birth. It is an arduous commute – but one that made their brief moment of communion with us all the more magical.

Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society: www.wdcs.org.uk