Upwelling in the south

We are currently on the mid-north coast of New South Wales and the first whale of the season has been sighted.

As we are stationary I can’t bring you a travel story from the past week, but I can take you back down south to talk about whales and wild coasts and the way the whales movements are dictated by something we don’t often hear about.

Whales, as you can imagine, need lots of food. So, as with all other animals, their movements are dictated by food and its whereabouts.

This brings us to the Bonney Upwelling.

Between Portland in Victoria and Robe in South Australia, a marine phenomenon called the “Bonney Upwelling” brings huge numbers of whales near to the southern coastline of Australia and within reach of whale watchers.

The current that causes the upwelling stirs up the ocean floor which is covered with dead things…animals and plants. They are swirled along and up to the light where, as food, they give the nourishment needed to create blooms of phytoplankton that feeds animals like krill, and schooling fish which are in turn eaten by larger animals, some of which are whales….also dolphins and seals, birds including penguins and shell fish like crabs and lobsters.

There is interesting information made available by the Federal Government on this upwelling and it tells us that Earth’s rotation via the Coriolis effect, sends currents to the left of prevailing winds, and if these are parallel to the coast, warm surface water is replaced by cold water from deep down and the layering of temperatures creates an upwelling.

Only one per cent of the Earth’s oceans experience these upwellings and these produce half of the world’s seafood.

However, we are interested in the whales that cruise along our coasts. Down here,  Blue Whales visit to feed and the cliffs of the southern coastline are in turn visited by thousands of people from all over the world to see the whales come in.

The upwelling can be seen from space as a dark blue stream. It has flowed north from the Southern Ocean near Antarctica and temperatures can be as low as nine degrees.

Portland Bay first took advantage of the whales that followed the food when the whaling industry began there in the 1830s and in ten years the Southern Right Whales had been fished out.

Happily, their numbers are vastly increasing year by year and the whaling industry is now tourist based.

Southern Rights, Humpbacks, Sperm and Blue Whales are seen daily. Tourists are given information on what each one looks like and its habits, so that whale watching is more interesting and so local authorities can get feedback to help with their estimation of the growing numbers of animals visiting the coast yearly.

Blue Whales are the largest animals ever to live and they can grow up to thirty metres in length and weigh 150 tonnes. They are endangered and are thought to live up to 100 years old.

These whales are more beautiful than the Southern Rights and Humpbacks that are quite unlovely. They are streamlined and have a small dorsal fin near their tail and when they blow, the water shoots up so high they can be detected up to 10 kilometres away on a good day and the blowing sound can be heard up to four kilometres away.

The sound of a whale blowing is magnetic. You have to look, to watch, to see the creature that made it.

Last year we spent three months at Point Samson just north of Karatha. During the day I would walk the beaches along the coast line and often I would hear that blowing sound really nearby. It was immense even though the whales up there are not as big as the Blues.

They would come in close by. You could see their eyes and wave and shout and they would look at you interestedly. They were in shallow water with part of their backs above the waterline, to drag their bellies along the sand to clean the barnacles off their skin. These great clusters of shells would be found along the beach.

I never felt silly running and waving and shouting to whales….I felt a companionship because their interest was as great as mine.

We lived for many years in Eden on the south coast of New South Wales on a headland surrounded on three sides by water. We could see whales from our sunroom and back deck and I will always be every bit as delighted each time I see one, as I was the first time.

It’s a great country that we live in, when you can run on the beach with an animal as big as a house and be free to make a fool of yourself without anyone seeing you.

Please try it.