Source : the age
The ocean off the NSW coast will be a humpback highway for the next few months, as the main northward migration for 40,000 whales gets under way.
The official start to whale watching season on May 1 comes six weeks after a handful of sightings on the South Coast in March, with the early migration a possible sign of stress from climate change.
Humpbacks spend summer feeding on krill in Antarctica, leaving in autumn to swim to warmer waters off Queensland and NSW to find mates, give birth and socialise. The 10,000-kilometres round trip back to Antarctica is one of the longest migrations of any mammal.
Britt Anderson, a project officer with the marine wildlife team at the National Parks and Wildlife Service, said the peak of the northward migration was normally July around Sydney, but there were already reports of whales north of Sydney.
“While the bulk of the population is yet to come through, it’s definitely an earlier season for whales heading north,” Anderson said.
ORRCA volunteers Greg and Diana Fox and NPWS senior field officer Cian Sarkis at Cape Solander lookout in Kurnell on May 1, 2025, the first official day of the whale migration season.Credit: Wolter Peeters
Dr Olaf Meynecke, research fellow at Griffith University and manager of the international Whales and Climate Program, said in March that the earlier migration was probably because record low sea ice reduced krill numbers, making it harder for whales to find food.
“In recent years, we have seen newborns and yearlings being left early by their mothers, likely due to food stress,” Meynecke said.
Fortunately, the humpback population has rebounded since the end of commercial whaling, in one of the greatest conservation successes of the past 50 years. Humpback numbers on the east coast have grown from less than 100 in the 1960s to about 40,000 now.
NPWS said the creatures, which grow up to 17 metres and 40 tonnes, were recently spotted at Shellharbour, Manly and Port Macquarie. Every year, thousands of whale watchers flock to clifftop vantage points or go on boat tours.
A humpback whale breaching in Sydney Harbour in a previous year.Credit: Jonas Liebschner/NPWS
Diana and Greg Fox from Cronulla volunteer with the Organisation for the Rescue and Research of Cetaceans in Australia (ORRCA), using binoculars and an app to count whales and record their direction of travel, the presence of juveniles and whether they are dragging ropes or fishing line.
Mostly the volunteers spot whale spouts – plumes of mist from the mammals breathing air through their blowholes. Occasionally, they might see a tail slap or a breach – an acrobatic leap out of the water.
Diana Fox said she had a “long family connection with the sea” – her ancestors were 19th-century lighthouse keepers and her uncles served in the navy – while her New Zealander husband had a great-grandfather who was a whaler “so I think he’s making up for that”.
“I just love the whales and sea life and dolphins … so I enjoy being there,” Fox said. “[The whales] are coming back from the brink of extinction … and it gives me great pleasure to see the numbers increasing.”
One of the main dangers for migrating whales is entanglement in fishing gear, and Anderson said NPWS was working with OceanWatch and other agencies to reduce this risk.
NPWS also has a Large Whale Disentanglement Team that works from small boats to free entangled whales.
All drones and watercraft must stay at least 100 metres from a whale or 300 metres from a calf, except jet-skis where the exclusion zone is always 300 metres.
If you see a distressed or entangled whale, call NPWS on 13000PARKS or ORRCA on 02 9415 3333.
