Whale Of a Time

Contributed by Peter

Humpback Whale, Flinders Reef, Moreton Island

It was the 14th June 2003, the ocean side of Flinders reef off beautiful Moreton Island just off Brisvegas, Queensland Australia ...

The water was calm and clear (up to 15 metres visibility). It was the afternoon dive around 4.30pm off one of Brisbane's best liveaboards ... We had dived many beautiful sites that day and this dive was to be a relaxing look see before the night dive.

There were supposed to be three in our dive group but at the last minute one of my dive buddies decided that she was not up to the dive even though the conditions were very tame (it was a decision that she truly regrets to this day as she pulled out as we were about to descend).

We were the last divers in the water...We descended very slowly as my dive buddy was on his first Open Water dive under instruction.

At about 8 meters we stopped on the anchor chain so the student could relax and get familiar with his surrounds. He and I were looking straight at each other. Going over signals when I noticed some movement to my right hand side. I didn't take too much notice until I realised it was coming toward us and it was big very big. I then realised that it was in fact a HUMPBACK whale. I quickly grabbed hold of my student, it was his FIRST dive after all and turned him toward this most magnificent, amazing, graceful and beautiful creature. You could easily hear his gasp as the whale passed within 3 metres of us, the great mammal eyeballed us the whole time as it glided by.

The feeling was total euphoria, almost surreal, unexplainable...

As we watch the humpback glide off into the distance, we noticed 4 other divers heading in our direction, very excited, they also had seen the 1 in a million sight that all divers dream of...

Lets just say we were all very happy waving our arms and gesturing to each other about what an incredible experience we had just had.

There was plenty to talk about on deck after that dive.

It was truly breathtaking....!