Did you know?
The whaleshark was not officially discovered until 1828 by Dr Andrew Smith, off the coast of South Africa
You get your own whale spotter plane for free!
Using a spotter plane significantly increases the chances our guests will swim with a humpback whale during their tour – whilst our skipper and crew and passengers also spot a fair few whales before our pilot does, its the pilot that lets us swim with as many whales as we do.
Humpback Whale Spotting
We also are the first whale tour company to choose to operate our own spotter plane, rather than sharing one spotter plane between multiple whale tour boats. Why do we do this given it costs a whole lot more? Because our own spotter plane means your own whale to swim with. On average our guests spend significantly longer swimming with a whale than most other humpback whale tours. (Our average swimtime per passenger, and swimtimes for every other whale tour operator, are recorded by the Department of Parks and Wildlife for every tour run each year, with this information being published monthly.
We choose NOT to charge our guests any sort of profit margin on top of the costs we incur to run our own spotter plane. No remuneration is paid to the pilot, the shareholders or our tour company as a result of our plane undertaking its spotting activities. Our ticket price includes a component for our plane that is calculated solely to reimburse us the costs of operating our spotter plane in a manner that is fully compliant with CASA requirements. Rather than earning any form of remuneration on the aerial work undertaken by our spotter plane, our business makes profits if we can delight our guests as they jump off a perfectly good boat in the middle of the open ocean to swim with the largest shark in the world!