Rare footage of a group of southern right whales mating off Western Australia’s south coast is according to marine biologists a healthy sign of a recovering population. Whale numbers plummeted in twentieth century because of commercial harvesting but recovering numbers could make witnessing events like this more common.
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00:00You could be forgiven for thinking these whales are dancing, but the southern right whales
00:07are actually mating.
00:08It's common along Australia's south coast at this time of year, but rarely captured
00:12on camera.
00:13In a mating event, typically with southern right whales, the female will put out a call.
00:19You can definitely get more than one male that is responding to the call, and in the
00:24case of that video, it looked like there was up to seven males in that one area that were
00:28trying to mate with the female.
00:30A hundred years ago, the species was on the brink.
00:33The whaling industry decimated the population of southern rights, with only a few hundred
00:37animals remaining in the 1920s.
00:40Albany where I am today was the last bastion for commercial whaling in Australia, continuing
00:45until 1978.
00:47Now it's a safe haven for the animals.
00:50And events like this are seen as a positive sign for the southern right population.
00:55So by seeing this breeding event, it gives us a lot of hope that we are going to have
00:59more southern rights in the future.
01:00If this encounter turns out to be successful, it'll take about a year for a calf to be born.