… I would like to share some photographs of a magical swim one morning with a very young and inquisitive whale calf.

The calf was probably only a couple of weeks old… and I’m sure it just wanted to play with us!!!! Mum was below about 30 feet down, fully aware of our presence. We were floating in the water as the calf left its comfortable position under mum’s head, and floated effortlessly up to the surface to breathe… whilst looking at us inquisitively.

I realise that projecting human emotions on to an animal is called Anthropomorphism…. but I still have this sense that this calf was just wishing we would play with it!!!!

It kept circling around us and splashed its fluke and seemed so playful.

The visibility was poor, but I wanted to show you all aspects of my whale swimming experience, so you all could see that it isn’t always pristine clear water – and that the reality of the variability of our amazing natural environment was present every moment.

There is one image where the calf is positioned under mum… just having a nap and using mum’s body as a bouyancy blocker – to remain down in the water as the young calf is so bouyant. See if you can work out the position of both the mum and calf, by using the white pectoral fins of both as a positional guide.

You can also see how difficult it is sometimes to see the whales in the depths. Sometimes we knew the whales were hanging down just beneath us.. but it was just so hard to discern where they were in the deep mysterious blue.

More pics from another amazing calf encounter tomorrow.