Extremely Rare Footage of Whales Up-Close | Our World

Australia's east coast is known as the humpback whale highway because in winter 35,000 whales travel up from Antarctica to our warmer waters. Oh that might have been a breach. Today we are heading out to try and take some samples of whales using a truly unique method. I had something at one o'clock, one o'clock potential breach So this course is awesome. Yeah blow! It's a blow! We've got whales! Oh two whales! Oh it's a breach! When the camera's always down. Oh okay now that's a peck slap. Right there is a beautiful thing for to see because it shows that the whales are not moving fast anymore. They're fapping at the surface. They're just hanging out. It's so perfect for sampling right now. So Alistair's now getting the drone ready. We will be using our purpose-built drones to sample their lung bacteria so they breathe air like you and I except their nose is located on top of their head. This is like an inbuilt snorkel so they can breathe air and as they do so we can fly the drone through that to collect their lung bacteria to learn more about their health internally. Okay there they are. A little bit to port please if you don't mind. Perfect. As you can see that right there is juicy sample hanging in the air. That is the sample we want to collect. We're in a really good position right now to make something happen in the science world. Turn to look south of your position. South. Okay there's, okay they're off! Sorry turn around Alistair. Turn to the right. To your right. Oh yeah stop stop. Get your, you're totally on the right path. Holy doly. Oh my gosh. Where Alistair is is perfect. We're all coming together. Oh perfect. Nice work Alistair. He got a sample. Going around again. Wow I'm right over the top. I can see it in the water pretty clear. Oh fantastic Alistair. Now I must point out we have a scientific license to do this type of research to get within only a few meters of a humpback whale. Up again. Right there. And snot sample. Nice. Well done. That is an awesome flight. You have nailed it. Wow oh god this is so exciting. Look at that. The petri dish is so much bigger than our other ones. Oh that's perfect. That right there is whale snot. Well done. So what we'll do now is we'll take it back to the lab and then we'll see what types of bacteria and viruses are living inside. It's been such a wonderful day already. We're gonna put this back on ice and then see if we can sample more whales on the humpback whale highway. Right can you see the whales Alistair? Oh my god. At our bow. Engines. Holy doolies guys. Oh my god. We are being mugged by an animal the size of a butt. Oh my god. Look at this. The size of these animals. Holy ****. I have never in my life had this kind of thing happen off Sydney. Look at the scars. Look at this animal right here. This animal is. Oh my god. I'm very emotional right now. Wow. Oh my gosh. Oh wow. That's tail. Sorry. I'm very emotional. That's amazing. Look. This is its arm. That's a fly off. Look at the animal bringing its mouth out of the water. It's just looking at our boat. This has never happened in Wales. Not sampling. Wow. Hear that? The roar. Here we go. A sample. This is the best research of my life. Winter is really my favourite time of the year for Australia's marine life. The wildlife adventures that are here right on our door are absolutely phenomenal. Whales are magnificent creatures and I'm so fortunate to be able to work with them. But you too can have the opportunity to help us learn more about them in our marine environment. So stick around because coming up later in the show we're going to tell you just how you can do that. It's midwinter and I'm in Bermagui on the New South Wales south coast. It's a beautiful spot but what's going on out there right now is even more spectacular. So we're going to go and check it out. So what's been going on the last few days? Why are we so eager to get out here right now? We've had a megapod or a mass aggregation of humpback whales all in the same area and that's where you get, well the other day we had 150 whales feeding in the same area but we're very hopeful that the pod was still around yesterday and we're still really hopeful that today we're going to get out and see the same thing. Must be awesome to sort of be surrounded by all of that. Absolutely yes. It's incredible. Just so much noise and so much smell. You can really really smell the whales. They're really smelly. What's the smell? It's like a fermented fish. It stinks. You're making it sound just inspiring. Yeah but it's just incredible. It's a pretty amazing amazing thing to witness. I think we've all kind of got our hearts in our chest at the moment because we're just desperate to see them. There's one breaching just over there. Oh wow. There's another there. They're all around us now. It's almost like they're dancing off the front of the boat. Did you hear that? It's like they're talking to us. So there's a bait ball over there. That's what they're calling it. I've never seen one of these before. It's like the surface of the ocean is moving and then around. Oh look at that. Wow. Wow. My goodness. They're just feeding right there. It's prehistoric almost. It shakes your core when you hear them bursting out of the water. And then the size of it. The scale of it. All happening at once. It's awesome. It is genuinely awesome. What we've seen today we've seen maybe twice in the last 19 years. So really really incredible. And so close. That's the thing you just, I can't get my head around. Like you could almost reach out and touch them. If you jumped in the water you'd probably be gobbled up. Awesome. It's just like it's been the best day. Unreal. There hasn't been much documentation of this sort of thing happening along the Australian coastline. Absolutely not. No. It was originally thought for many years that the whales only fed on krill down in Antarctica. But we've just lately discovered that they've been doing some feeding here on the south coast. And in the last two years we've started documenting these megapods. You have done this for so long and you're obviously so passionate about whales. What's today like for you? Oh it's incredible. It's amazing. Yeah. Really really stoked. Well thank you for having us. We feel pretty privileged. No worries at all. They always make big promises when you come on trips like this. But you never imagine you're going to see it at its finest. Surrounded by whales. Feeding on the bait ball right in the middle of it as it happens. And this is genuinely rare. And it tells us something much bigger about the health of our oceans and the health of the Australian coastline. And it's been a real privilege to see these beasts so up close and personal.