Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. The whales are coming in hot. There’s a pod of at least six humpbacks, which we can count from their plumes of spray.
They’re travelling fast and close to the surface, huffing as they race past the mouth of Jervis Bay, on the NSW south coast. “Quick! Get ready! Wetsuits on, let’s get on the line,” urges our skipper and guide Dylan Boag. And that is how I find myself clinging to a fluoro-yellow, nylon rope called the mermaid line, the humpback pod racing toward our group of six swimmers.
Whale migration periods offer a chance to see whales like never before. “Hold!” calls our dive guide Elizabeth Peabody, leading us in the water. “Hold the line!” Then, the noise.
It’s a roiling, boiling, thunderous thrum that passes through my blood, as the equivalent of a dozen double-decker buses bear down on us. “Is this wise?” I ask myself out loud. “It’s mystical,” shouts Trish, a veteran of marine swims, over the roar of the ocean.
On Elizabeth’s command, we let go of the line, the boat moves away, and we are left bobbing in 60-metre deep water, waiting. The theory is that the whales will pass beneath us. “Look down exactly when I tell you,” instructs Elizabeth.
“You’d be surprised how many people don’t, then they miss the entire event.” Prime whale spotting ..
. the headland at Bannisters by the Sea. I wouldn’t be surprised.
All my life, I have missed seei.