Quote:
Originally Posted by spartacus
Very impressive. 
Out of interest - what's to stop the whales making contact with you or your daughter accidentally in the water while they're feeding? Looks like visibility is reduced and they're gong at quite a rate of knots. |
They didn't realise whales were on that baitball and had gone in to see what fish might be feeding on them ( something we regularly do ). Sometimes the bait balls will wrap around you, which isn't the best place to be when any big predator is charging through. If the bait stay a few metres away as these did then you are pretty safe otherwise we head back to the boat.
Unlike us humans there are few things out there that will just come up and attack us ( even sharks which we see lots of ) understanding and recognising behaviour changes is the key.
He did have an incident where we were 30km offshore and thought we had seen a big mako so poured tuna blood and cut cubes from a fresh tuna into the water to get it close to photograph. It turned out to just be a giant sunfish about the size of a garage door, my daughter was seven at the time and keen to swim with one ( in water over 1000m deep). After about 15 mins in the water slowly swimming further and further from our boat we heard splashing sounds, looking back at our boat we saw a large mako trying to eat the burley pot and outboard. That was a tense few moments heading back to the boat!!!
I've also been in the water in the far north of the country where you need to be carefull of crocodiles and packs of sharks, this has been the only time I felt I was in any danger. The sharks up there work in packs and charge you from all directions, still a fantastic experiance though.
Jon
spy-sea-one
Sula
Imogen
