Whale watching with Moorea Eco Tour
The second time I've swum with these big beauties 🐋
We arrive at Hauru public beach just before 7:30am to meet Cata Manu, the catamaran we’ll be heading out on to try and find some whales. Our guide, Maire, is a local Tahitian with long flowing black hair down to the waistband of his shorts. His son is beside him, Moanarua, a young guy with a big smile and a bit of English.
The boat is super comfortable, and while the sun’s not strong we go and sit on the net that stretches between the two hulls. It’s like a window into the turquoise water below us. We see corals flash by and for one brief second, a crystal clear turtle.
It’s a small tour this morning. Just us four, plus a French couple and their toddler.
We exit the reef and immediately there is a whale. Maire tells us we won’t stop there because there are already three or four tour groups, and it’s too stressful for the whale.
“We’ll go find a whale without any boats around,” he says, and we continue on.
As the catamaran sails along calm waters, the lush green mountains of Mo’orea in the background, we’re entertained by the life-and-death game played by some flying fish as they soar a metre or so above the water, chased by large seabirds. The whole boat cheers when a bird dives into the water to catch its breakfast.
When we stop, we’re near two hooked fins that stick out of the water and drift aimlessly. We have two pilot whales sleeping. Where there are pilot whales, we’re told, there are often humpbacks as well.
We see a humpback break the surface and the next hour is a cat-and-mouse game where we try to swim quickly enough to catch a glimpse of a moving whale. There are regulations in place in all of French Polynesia that you can’t approach the whales too closely with a running motor, so the boat stops 100m away and you have to swim the rest. The problem? If the whale keeps heading on it’s way, as ours did, it’s hard to keep up.
I could hear it so clearly. The whale singing, so loud that it sounded like it was right next to me. At one point we were over the top of it, a big shape in the depths with bright white spots, but it was hard to see clearly due to particles in the water.
After a while of chasing them, I’m exhausted. We hop back in the boat and Maire gets a call from another group who have a few whales hanging around, so we go to join them.
We get back in the water for another swim. This time it’s just me, the French guy and our guide. We approach and I see it, light grey and massive, only a few metres in front of me, suspended in the water for a moment that lasts a long time.
Then we hear the whale song again. It’s the singer, coming after these whales. They spook and start swimming away, and we head back to the boat.
On the way back to the beach, we pass into the lagoon and have a few big stingrays come up to the boat. Then a pod of spinner dolphins come and start jumping out of the water directly in front of us. It’s like they’re showing off and saying hi!
Our glimpses of whales in the water are brief, but I’m grateful we saw any at all. It’s always a case of luck and chance when trying to swim with the whales. Sometimes they’re interested in you, sometimes they’re off doing their own whale business. You just have to hop in the water and hope for the best!
If you liked this article, you might like to read about my first swim with the whales here.
Or if you want more stories from the water, read about our daily swim here.