Whale swimming and Cave diving - best day ever!!

We dived the crystal clear caves at the northern point of Eua.


One of the interesting crayfish we saw on the dark cavern of the cave


One of the humpback whales breaching


A humpback swimming along beside the boat


One of the whlaes diving down where it would surface a few minutes later


We had an amazing trip being able to swim with 4 humpback whales


Karen and the whales


The hideaway viewing platforms from the shore

18 August 2010

The main reason we came to Tonga at this time of year was to swim with the humpback whales which hang out in Tongan waters in August where they give birth to their calfs.

We started the day off with cave diving on the northern part of Eua. We got dropped off into some surging choppy water then it was a hard swim against the current to finally get into the cave. The cave was massive with light penetrating through holes on the ceiling. Then there was huge waves crashing through into the cave from the surface. A the end of the dive we swam into a pitch dark cave to the side where we saw 50 or so little lights moving round. We turned on our lights to see all these brown lantern fish swimming around. There was also 2 crayfish hiding in the dark cave.

Then it was onto the whale swimming. On our way out to find the whales we spotted at least 5 different groups of humpbacks. They were everywhere, moving in all directions so we choose the group closest to us. After 10 minutes of following them and them diving they started breaching. The whales came completely out of the water which seemed impossible because of the size of the animals. They then seemed to meet up with another group of humpbacks and we jumped into the water. There were 4 whales swimming under us and all around us just as curious to see us as we were to see them. We swam away from the boat and they hung out with us for 20 minutes. At one stage they got within a couple of metres of us and started making the noises they do to communicate with each other. Such beautiful, massive, peaceful animals it was so incrediable that they allowed us to swim so close and interact with them.