Quicksilver Group News
May 23rd, 2014Minke Swims with Silverswift Passengers
A playful dwarf minke whale has delighted snorkellers and divers travelling with Cairns dive and snorkel vessel Silverswift yesterday. Believed to be the first sighting of the season, passengers were thrilled when at Gordon’s mooring on Flynn Reef, a Minke appeared and swam around for 30 minutes.
A Minke whale swims with Silverswift passengers – Photo Credit: Xavier Keir
The minke approached the snorkellers while Silverswift was moored and arrived by swimming over the divers. Curious and inquisitive the minke came in to have a look and started doing loops and swimming away and then coming back again to visit and surfaced several times while eyeing off the snorkellers.
Silverswift Dive Instructor Sam Killian said “The minke was about 5 metres in length and was an amazing experience not only for our passengers from around the world but also for the crew. We visit the reef every day but we still are in awe of the marine life that we encounter.”
Russell Hore, Quicksilver Marine Biologist said “Interactions have become more frequent in the past few years and is one of those once in a life time experiences. About 300 people each season have the privilege. Swimming with Minke Whales has been voted Queensland’s top secret and Australia’s third best kept secret in a recent travel poll.
Silverswift and the Quicksilver Group support minke whale research by contributing data and sightings information to the Minke Whale Project at James Cook University in Townsville. This partnership between the tourism industry, JCU researchers and GBRMPA has been hailed as a World’s Best Practice approach to the sustainable management of swimming-with-whales tourism by several international wildlife conservation organisations. 90% of minke whale sightings are during June and July.
The dwarf minke whale (Balaenoptera acutorostrata subspecies) occurs only in the southern hemisphere, and the Great Barrier Reef provides habitat for their only known reliable aggregation in the world. Dwarf minke whales grow to a maximum of around 8m, with adults weighing around 5-6 tonnes. They have a characteristic white blaze on their flippers and shoulders, contrasting with their dark grey top color. They have two blowholes, like all baleen whales.
The dwarf minke whale is the second smallest baleen whale, and its population size and migration are still largely unknown. Minke Whale Project scientists on the Great Barrier Reef however have been able to learn a great deal about this group of dwarf minkes in recent years with help from tourism operators and visitors to the Reef, and many identified individual whales are returning to the same Reef sites each year. The bottom line is – don’t swim to the whale, let the whale swim to you!
