Obviously our main focus is to show you the gentle giants of the ocean, more commonly know as humpback whales, but being out in the ocean for a couple of hours has way more to offer than "just" humpback whales.

On our way into the open ocean we pass pretty much all the sights you want to see in Sydney: The Harbour Bridge, The Opera House, Fort Denison and of course the harbour itself. There also is more wildlife besides the whales: we do see dolphins on around 50% of our trips (Common Dolphins and Bottlenose that would be). If you are into sea birds, chances are very high to see an Albatross in flight with a wingspan from 2m up to 4m. Most common here are the Black Browed and Yellow Nose Albatross.

So for all the keen photographers out there: its well worth it!

Im pretty sure all of you want to see some whale pictures as well. The Humpback migration is now well under way with around 40-50 Humpbacks passing Sydney each day. We have been very fortunate on our trips so far. There have been a lot of jumping whales and lucky enough i managed to get most of them ( exept one - not a good feeling to miss a breach, i tell you!)

Check out our Whale Sightings Page. It is updated daily (more or less =) and the focus is clearly on the amazing whale pictures taken during our cruises. Here in our Whale Blog im trying to show you more what else there is to see and tell you a bit about everything!

I must say that Ocean Dreaming II is a perfect boat for photography. With its 3 levels you have the choice to be either very high or very low. Compared to Ocean Dreaming I, OD II is a lot lower so i can shoot closer to the sea level which results in more spectacular pictures of jumping whales, so here you go, jumping whales!! >>





Here is some nice Albatross pictures taken Yesterday:

It actually is extremely hard to get good bird shots and there is a good reason for that!

Well for starters most birds are not so kind and do a fly by very close to the boat. Even with a big zoom lens ( 400mm in my case, so could be more! if anyone wants to donate $ 15.000 so i can by a nice prime lens, let me know =) they are just not close enough.

And then its quite hard to get them in focus, birds being quite small (compared to a 40t whale at least) the camera likes to focus on everything else BUT the bird you want to take a picture off...

But sometimes we get lucky and have two black browed albatross fighting for fish close to the boat. And i dont know if you are with me here, but i think it looks awesome!

Today we had our first whale watching trip on Ocean Dreaming II. And as you can see we did pretty well! =)



Before we left the harbour we had a confirmed sighting from one of our spotters, so we pretty much knew where we had to go. after only 10-15 min (thanks to our very fast and comfortable boat ) travelling down the coast we spotted two humpback whales inshore of us, just of Coogee beach.

the spotters told us they would have quite normal downtimes around the 5min mark. So we got ourselves into position, waiting for them to come back up again. It is not unusual for whales to change their behaviour when boats are showing up, so we havent been to worried after waiting for 10min at the rough spot where we think the whales should be. Basically the longer the downtime, the less likely it is that the whales are moving fast. so we slowed down a bit waiting for them to show up.

After 30 minutes of waiting we got a call from another spotter further up the coast, they had the whales close to them. Not to sure what they were doing in the meantime, but obviously they were a bit faster than we thought. But not a problem, having the fastest whale watching boat around, we got there in no time and spent some quality time with the whales.



One of the other whale watching vessels had to leave before us, so they missed out on what happend next. There is no warning what so ever if a whale is going to leap out of the water. So being quick and having a decent camera helps alot, but looking into the right direction would be essential as well =) But as you can see, i was lucky enough to get some shots, which would be the first pictures of a whale in 2009 off the coast of Sydney!

Yesterday we had our first trip of the season. It was the first time for me to go out on our fast little boat Totally Wild. And i can tell you, its bloody fast!!

we left darling harbour around 3pm, cruising through the harbour when we spotted some Bottlenose Dolphins on our way to the heads. There must have been around 15-20 of them, some bow riding the pressure wave of a ferry going to Manly.

After a couple of minutes with the dolphins we ventured out into the open ocean on our mission to find the first whales of the season. Basically at the beginning of the whale migration all whales come from the south making their way to warmer waters up north to give birth and to mate, so usually we go south to meet them head on. We also had a spotter sitting on the cliffs 70m above sealevel to help us spotting. Unfortunately we didnt have a confirmed sighting of a whale at that stage, so all we could do is go as far south as possible and run into some whales.

We reckon that there are around 4-5 whales passing Sydney each day at the beginning of the season, so there would be some whales somewhere at some point, all we had to do is being at the right spot at the right time.

Of course given a time frame of around 90min in the open ocean we have to be a bit lucky to get a whale passing sydney in that time. But whale numbers will pick up daily so it becomes easier to find them. Record day of whales passing Sydney last year was around 70-80 as far as i remember. but even then it is possible to drive into a patch without whales. But in general we find whales on 99% of our Trips, if we dont you can come back for free.

So first trip of the season we have been unlucky, but we do it every day and we are quite good at it! Ill be on the next trip trying to get that first whale shot of the season, fingers crossed!