Whale watching during the Fishing Comp.

I'll just start off with another magical day in TONGA. Dyl, Lincoln and Lyndon headed out for the Nuku'alofa monthly fishing comp on Sat morning. As we were setting up for a trawl we spotted some whales off in the distance and everyone aboard was excited. As the day continued we caught less fish, OK none. So we headed north to do some bottom bashing when a pod of whales made contact with us and we spent the next hour with them. There were about eight of them in total following us around swimming under the boat and breaching.

This was the hardest shot of the day as Dyl wanted to watch the whales not have his photo taken with them.

They came in for a wave.

Tail slapping was a big hit.

A big one continued to show off the entire time.

They even swam under the boat. Dyl was telling me to look over his side and I was like don't worry buddy he's over this side too. One whales tail fin was as wide as Satisfaction is long, 7.2m.

You could nearly touch this one then I pulled the camera away because we didn't want it getting wet.

A mother and calf from earlier in the day.

After catching a feed of reef fish we headed back for the weigh in at 1600 and on the way back in we came across a life ring which turned out to be off the Princess Ashika, which sunk approx 12mths before with 72 people aboard. Lyndon spent the next morning handing it over to the police investigation team and giving statements.

To end the day off though we returned with our catch to the fishing club for a debrief (beers) and to tell our tall tails. But as it turned out though we were the only ones to land a fish soooo..... Dyl won the Jr comp with his Emperor and we won with our coral trout and Emperor. No monsters though but they were a great chew for dinner.