West Gate whales: Giant humpbacks swim up to Melbourne's busiest freeway
The duo was spotted on Tuesday on Ports Victoria's traffic cameras that monitor the Yarra River, the grainy stills showing the whales' breaching fins, just enough to make drivers do a double take.
It is not uncommon for whales to frolic at the top end of Port Phillip Bay, near Williamstown and Port Melbourne, and even at the mouth of the Yarra River, Dolphin Research Institute research officer David Donnelly said.
'But to get up to the bridge is not something we've got a record of previously,' Donnelly said.
'Our records are well-kept for the last 10 years but sporadically date back to [1984]. We have quite a long history of visits of those animals.'
Whale visits to Port Phillip Bay vary from year to year. Hardly any of the animals appeared in the bay in 2024, compared with multiple visits a few years ago and again this year, Donnelly said.
'It looks like it's the same whales that have been hanging around the top end of the bay since just before Sunday. So we've been having them coming up and down the eastern seaboard, but they've also been in Corio Bay, and down through to Point Cook,' Donnelly said.
The research officer, who founded the Victorian whale sightings citizen science project Two Bays Whale Project, said he and his colleagues were working to verify the humpback whale pair's path.
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