What does it look like when you almost run into a whale?

[stefo2]

I was diving off Zanzibar a few years ago. After a pretty ordinary dive in fairly poor visibility (5-7 metres) we surfaced and there was our skipper jumping up and down on the boat shouting "Did you not see the whale?!" "What whale?" "A humpback whale passed you, about 10 metres from your marker buoy"...
At first we didn't really believe him because it is extremely rare to see whales on that side of the island, but once we were on the boat and followed it into the direction the skipper said it went, we actually saw it - doing all the "whaley stuff" for us...
It must have passed us on the dive just out of the visibility range - bummer!

 

[GA Under Water]

I am hoping to get some of these seen by me when I go to HI at the end of this month. They say it is Whale season, maybe I'll get a close up view.

 

[Thalassamania]

My assistant and I were out with four students at Monastery in the early 1980s, we were over the sand just outside the kelp bed. We settled down onto the sand to do doff and dons. The students were facing out to sea and my assistant and I were facing the students. I took my tank off and then replace it. I pointed to the first student on my right and signaled for him to do the exercise. No response. I signaled again, circling both hands in the "hurry up" signal. Still ... no response; in fact as I looked at the other three students none of the them were paying attention. When I finally got their attention, they pointed behind me, I looked back and there was nothing there out of the ordinary so I signaled them to continue the exercise and they did. When we surfaced they told me that a small Gray Whale had been, sort of, peeking over my shoulder and watching. They claimed he was less than ten feet away but had swum off before I turned around. I'm still sorry I missed it, but that was a great day for the students.

 

[spectrum]

I think it's a once in a lifetime thing if you're really, really lucky. We had this encounter, I was there for both.

Pete

PS, Yes That's when I took my avatar picture.

Read more here

 

[Thalassamania]

I think it's once in a lifetime thing if you're really, really lucky. We had this encounter, I was there for both.

Pete

PS, Yes That's when I took my avatar picture.

WOW!!!!!

 

[spectrum]

WOW!!!!!

That happened on my wife's first cold water skin-dive, she came out hooked. A year latter we were scuba certified.

Pete

 

[el ridgeo]

I was on the Solmar V last year in late April. We were on our first dive of the day at Roca Partida at about 70 feet when 3 humpback whales (2 adults & a baby) passed over our group. They were out of sight in just a couple of seconds. The dive masters told us there had been a big pod of whales the week before but they hadn't expected to see any on this trip.
The whales stayed close to our boat for the two days we were at Roca Partida. Our dive master told us they were teaching the baby to hold it's breath. We were able to get close to them a couple of times with the pangas. The whales would be motionless at about 50 feet with the baby tucked up under the head of one of the adults. They'd stay like that for about 5 minutes, then the baby would pull away and head to the surface. A couple of minutes later it would return and then the three whales would swim off a little distance and then stop and resume the breath holding lessons.
We were able to get pretty close to the whales; about 15-20 feet. They never seemed to be annoyed by our presence.

 

[Fish_Whisperer]

I would have promptly screamed, huffed through 400 psi, and crapped my wetsuit, all at the same time!