Brisbane Whale Watching — Attraction in Greater Brisbane

Spectacular, fantastic, enchanting! A truly extraordinary day for my 5 yr old son and I, and our pal Jane, as well Austin and Stephanie the new friends that we made onboard. The perfectly clear sunny day with almost no wind, began with an orderly boarding of enthused passengers, with cordial and jovial crew appraising us of necessary safety concerns and features. We found a table in the spacious main ground level cabin for my son to enjoy drawing as we leisurely cruised and chatted our way out toward Moreton Island and the main watery ‘whale highway’. Upon reaching the Island area, we very quickly enjoyed numerous sightings of the truly huge Hump Back whales, in small groups (herds? pods?) here and there about us. We saw lots of fluke (tail) slapping and marvelled at the large clouds of water that erupted upon impact, and the more sedate fin slapping, as well the more energetic, near complete body breaches (jumping out of the water). We were advised that these activities served both as body exfoliation, removing barnacles and lice, as well as communication with their friends, who would occasionally answer with similar crashes. The highlight by far was the surprise visit from a huge whale that swam beneath the vessel, and appeared surfacing directly in front of us, almost within arms reach. My son and I were gob smacked. Truly we were very fortunate that day, in the right place and the right time. A most memorable moment indeed! The provided lunch was excellent - delicious, fresh, well prepared. I made an error when selecting my meal during the booking process, and the crew went out of their way to find a solution, in a friendly and helpful manner. The day felt well organised, professional and attentive to environmental impact with clear concern, reverence and respect for these giant creatures, and yet also it remained fun and relaxed - I suspect that it’s an art form to achieve that balance in any commercial venture, and in my opinion they meet that challenge well. I feel that our late in the whale season visit was a good choice - the warm weather, whilst still plenty of whale activity. With water temperatures and oceans currents being altered by human induced climate change, the season is beginning and finishing earlier than is usual, and as the ocean becomes increasingly overfished and it ecological system collapses (do watch the 'Seaspiracy' documentary) these amazing experiences will decline until some significant human population dietary change is reflected in reduced fishing practices which are horrific in their wholesale destruction of fish populations, impacts on feeding and breeding patterns, as well as annihilation of sea floor life and ancient giant coral formations and more - interestingly, the majority of oxygen we breathe is produced by algae in the oceans, not the forests. As the United Nations have advised for some time, we all need to transition to plant based diets if our planet is to retain the diversity of life it has enjoyed until now - 50 species of plants and animals go extinct every day I believe. I wholeheartedly endorse the Whale Watching adventure, it is a most worthy investment of your time and energies, and you will take with you memories that are sure to remain with you to the last! Thank you to all of the crew for a magnificent day - we will very likely see you again...

We were really excited about this activity, we both love wildlife and this activity had been praised with glowing reviews. We had been following the page in Instagram for months and it looked brilliant. However, we just simply did not enjoy it at all. We admit that there were lots of whales around but that wasn't the factor making this trip not enjoyable.

At 9am a member of staff attempted to give us information when we were boarding, the majority of us at the back did not hear a single word of what was said and we had to hope it wasn't anything important.

When we boarded, we waited until 10am to actually start moving. On the way to get to the area that the whales usually are we stopped, there was an announcement that there was a "glitch" and we stopped whilst the engineers tried to sort it out. We eventually got out to the whales, I'd say it was well over an hour. To say we were supposed to be back at half two and the trip out to the location was so long and that we had to wait for the glitch to be fixed it didn't really leave us that much time for the actual whale watching. We didn't even get any extra time added to it at the end, we were back at exactly 14.30.

The boat was a lot smaller than you think, it was really packed out with people making it hard to actually see the whales especially if you are small. We sat at the back patiently waiting for the boat to carry on moving on so we could get to see the whales, everytime they eventually did come to the back of the boat they automatically turned the boat around so the people at the front could see. Primarily all the whale action was at the front of the boat because of this. Most of us at the back were getting annoyed by this and we didn't really get to see many. You could walk to the front of it but it was so busy you couldn't get past others. It would have been fair if they did not turn the boat around and let the people at the back of it actually enjoy the whales for the short few times they made their way to the back of the boat. We didn't manage to get anything to eat due to how busy it was. There was a lack of direction from staff, the people that were outside and not in the VIP area felt left out, nobody knew about a raffle or anything that was actually going on inside such as all the food and drinks etc. The speaker was faulty at the back of the boat too and we missed most of what was being said about the area and whales and it made a really loud horrible noise. Beer bottles were being flung around, luckily they did not hit anyone. I think by the end of it everyone at the back were just happy to be back on land. We were so disappointed as we were really looking forward to it.

The whales were great though for the couple we did see. Hopefully others will have a better...

This was one of the first trips I booked when I knew I was coming to Brisbane and I couldn't wait to get out on the water. We booked the transfer from Brisbane and it was really simple and easy to get to the pick up point from our apartment! Picked up by a friendly guy and once we'd picked a few others up we were on our way to Redcliffe Jetty. Once there we had a bit of time to get some coffee then we headed onto the jetty and the fantastic Eye-spy catamaran. We had booked the VIP cruise so we were on the top deck with our own table and we were offered some complimentary beers! Fantastic! We were also first to the buffet being VIP's! We set off from Redcliffe and over towards Moreton Island and we got a good view of all the different seabirds and the sand dunes of Moreton Island. I was intrigued to see on the website that it states 'guaranteed sightings of whales or your money back'! TBH, I wasn't sure a whale would do what it's told by a load of tourists and I'm sure if they wanted to, they just hang about in the deep but suddenly Captain Kerry notified all the passengers that 3 humpbacks had been spotted and we all legged it up to the top deck. And lo and behold, there they were! It's hard to describe in words.. I would just say you have to do this trip to experience the sheer size and magnificence of these beautiful creatures! How on earth do people hunt them? Japan, shame on you!!! It was like they enjoyed being by the boat and just hung around for ages, coming up and down and spurting from their blow holes. There were a number of different pods and what was great was that there seemed to be no rush from the crew to move on! They do this every single day in the Winter months but they came across as it being the first time they'd sighted them! The crew were so helpful and informative and Captain Kerry told us so much information about the whales and the area we were in. Honestly, this was one of the best trips I did in Australia and at the end we were driven back to Brisbane - most of the coach was asleep but I put that down to the excitement and the sea air! Don't think about doing...