{"id":16459,"date":"2023-04-14T16:39:17","date_gmt":"2023-04-14T16:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.naturepl.com\/blog\/?p=16459"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:58:25","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:58:25","slug":"the-day-i-danced-with-whales-for-four-hours-by-shane-gross","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.naturepl.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/14\/the-day-i-danced-with-whales-for-four-hours-by-shane-gross\/","title":{"rendered":"“The Day I Danced with Whales…for Four Hours!” By Shane Gross"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n

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Photographer Shane Gross<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On a rare calm day off the remote island of Tubuai in French Polynesia, photographer Shane Gross and his diving buddies had an extraordinary encounter with a pair of humpback whales. After spotting the humpbacks playing at the surface, Gross and his friends slipped silently into the ocean and swam in their direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as we saw them in our peripheral vision, we stopped swimming,\u201d says Gross. \u201cAnd what happened next was nothing short of astonishing. The whales swam directly to us, passing within a few meters. We were still and silent on the outside while bursting with excitement on the inside. Little did we know they would stay with us for the next four hours! We didn’t even have to swim to keep up, they kept coming back to us over and over and over.”<\/p>\n

“It was a male and female in a courtship dance, but I think the female was pretty bored of him and took us as something new to be curious about. We could hear them vocalise to each other and saw them roll over on their backs, splashing their massive pectoral fins in playful joy. A couple of times the male went down for a nap, but the female (which we affectionately named Lucile) never stopped playing.\u201d<\/p>\n