YEAR 9 geography students from Port Macquarie High School finished their studies in geography for the term by going whale-watching.
Faculty head teacher Chris Fitzpatrick said oceanography was a new subject offered to Year 9 students this year as part of the geography curriculum.
“Since we introduced this new subject as an elective choice for year-nine,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said.
“Fifty students have selected it and we formed two classes.
“It is proving very popular and it will definitely run again next year.
“Going whale-watching seemed a practical way to study the behaviour of humpback whales and a nice way to round-off the second term,” he said.
Craig Sargent, a skipper on Port Macquarie Cruise Adventures boats for the past nine years, spoke to the students about some of his observations over the years.
“Firstly, whales are on the increase and we estimate around 20,000 whales swim north to warmer waters each year to have their calves, before returning to the Antarctic,” Mr Sargent said.
“The whale season extends from about the second week in May to the start of November although we have seen them from as early as 24 April and as late as 6 December.
“We also estimate that they are increasing by 10 to 15 per cent each season.”
Mr Sargent said his passengers were almost guaranteed to see whales on each trip… and he was correct. On the school outing, a pod of five whales was soon spotted.
The students were delighted.
“I am happy to see that there are still so many around,” Kiara Cook said.
“I didn’t expect we’d find them so easily.”
“The best part was when a whale jumped out of the water,” Regan Elias said.
“It was quite spectacular… they’re huge!”
“When I took oceanography as a subject,” Bailey Armstrong said,
“I wasn’t expecting it to be this exciting.”
Before returning to shore Mr Sargent told the students about a whale that came right up to his boat’s propeller recently and seemed to be playing with the bubbles.
“He did that for about 30 minutes even when I zig-zagged,” he said.
Students were back at school by recess to attend classes. Somehow, though, the remaining lessons for the day didn’t feel quite as exciting.
