Humpback Whales Trip Report 2023

Ha’apai, Tonga
September 28 - October 5, 2023

September 28, 2023 - Arrival Day. We arrived in Ha’apai. The 8AM flight got us there on time. Well, they got us to the island early. It turns out the airline decided to change our flight without telling us, so instead of an 8AM departure, the flight was leaving at 7:20AM. Thankfully we all were planning on arriving early and got on our flight without any issues.

Ha’apai is beautiful and today the weather is amazing. Fingers crossed it stays that way for the rest of the week. We got to the island and our driver from Sandy Beach was there waiting to pick us up.

What is fun about this island and the airport is the airport runway runs across the main road, so whenever a plane lands they have to close the road. Probably a pain in the ass for the locals, but cool for us tourists.

After we check in, we are all going for a snorkel because the water is beautiful here.

Tomorrow the whale swim begins… Can’t wait!

September 29, 2023 - Day One in the Water. It was a really good day one. Water conditions were amazing but it was overcast all day, and we never did have great sun light for a shot at quality underwater images. I managed a couple of shots that I liked, and our guests captured a lot of videos, but with the amazing visibility that we had, I was hoping for more opportunities for us.

But the light was tough on the cameras.

We did have a lot of whales today, Abby our guide estimated 19 different whales today. We saw a bunch of different moms with calves. Some of them were shy and did not want us in the water with them, so we left them alone.

We did manage a couple good encounters with friendly babies though, which was great. It was also a great day for breaches. One of the calves was going mad with breaches which was a lot of fun, and epic for topside photography.

The highlight today was at the end of the day. We got to see a heat run! A heat run is a group of males all chasing a female in the hopes of mating with her. This one was on fire. So many males were after the female. We counted nine males, but there might of been more. The males were trying hard to catch her, slamming into each other, trying to knock out the other suiters. It was intense and a great way to finish our first day at sea.

Excited to see what tomorrow brings.

September 30, 2023 - Day Two with the humpback whales. Another good day. It was a bit choppier and again it was overcast. No rain though, which made us all happy.

There was some wind though, which made things a bit chilly. So between dives, we would grab our wind jackets and put them on quickly.

We encountered a lot of moms and calves today, so we got a lot of water time.

Sadly the water visibility was nasty, there was so much crap in the water, which mucked up all our images and video.

There is some debate as to what caused the crap in the water. One theory is yesterdays rain caused the muck in the water today? I was wondering if it had to do with current direction. I was not sure if yesterdays currents were coming from a different direction and helped clean up the visibility. Whatever did it, caused the water conditions to go to shit.

The best stuff today was form the drone. My buddy Antonio flew his drone today and got a lot of great clips of a baby whale playing on the surface. The footage looks epic. Im excited to share that with you all.

Tomorrow is Sunday and by Tonga law, no one works on Sunday, so we are not allowed to go out on the boats. So tomorrow we are going to go snorkeling in an area that has a beautiful reef.

It is also a great spot for zebra sharks. So going to try and find these beautiful sharks.

It is not whales but I am definitely looking forward to it.

October 1, 2023 - Day Three. No whale swim today. It is Sunday and by law no one is allowed to work. So the boats are not allowed to go out.

Today the sun was out in full force… sadly we did not have that for our whale swims damn it!

But we took advantage of it and went out for a beach dive to snorkel the reef and look for the zebra sharks. Sadly we did not see any zebra sharks, but the reef here is spectacular!

It was an amazing, amazing dive. At some points I felt like we were in the Avatar movie. It was so dizzying with beauty. I was overwhelmed.

We head out tomorrow for day three with the whales… and I can’t wait!

October 2 - Day Four. Today we went out for whales. Sadly we had more wind and it was again overcast. The perfect skies from Sunday did not spill over. Damn it.

But we made the most of it and went out to find whales… and whales we did find.

We didn’t get a lot of swims but we did have a great time with the whales when we did find them. Towards the end of the day the winds picked up and it the water was really churned up, so we called it a day a couple hours early.

October 3. Day Five. We had some pretty special encounters today. We finally met one of the juvenile males in the area. These are the dream whales to encounter because they are so social.

When a mom weens the young males, the males seek out other males to hang out with, but the big males push them out, so Juvenile males are lonely. So they sometimes seek out people to interact with.

So when you find one, the encounters can be MAGIC!

And thankfully we did find one.

The encounters did not last long, because the guy we found is getting close to breeding age so he was following a female around as well.

We had crap weather again, but it was a really good day.