From Mid-June to Mid-October every year humpback whales enter Niue waters to give birth and nurture their young. Photo / Hunter Malcon
Lifelong scuba diver Terry Ward finds Niue’s biggest thrills only require a mask and snorkel.
A scuba diver for more than half of my life, it’s rare that I find myself more exhilarated with a snorkel in my mouth rather than a regulator attached to an oxygen tank on my back. But on a recent trip to Niue, I discovered that some of the ocean’s most magical moments take place where you linger at the surface.
I’d ventured a long way from my home in Florida to get to the 260sq km coral atoll that barely registers as a blip in the vast South Pacific. But within minutes of landing from Auckland and arriving at Niue’s only hotel, the 55-room Scenic Matavai Resort, on a clifftop along the island’s southwest coast, the whale bell on the oceanfront terrace was already ringing out to announce the reason I’d come.
From roughly July to September every year, humpback whales on their annual migration north from Antarctica arrive in the deep waters surrounding Niue to warm up, calve and mate. I’d planned my trip for August to coincide with when they’re more consistently seen. And while nearby islands like Tonga are also popular for whalewatching tours that let snorkelers enter the water with them, Niue offers a rare opportunity to find yourself among humpbacks with far fewer human crowds. They often come extraordinarily close to shore (within 100m) here, too, thanks to the island’s plunging depths that are revered for dazzling water clarity – Niue’s limestone geography and lack of runoff from rivers means visibility often pushes the 70m mark.
I spent my first hours in Niue watching passing humpbacks fluke and frolic just offshore from the hotel’s pool bar – no binoculars needed and with a cocktail in my hand instead, with my friend, Jake. A lifelong surfer who’s also from Florida, he’s lived just outside of Muriwai with his Kiwi partner for more than 20 years but had yet to visit Niue.
Seeing humpbacks underwater had long been a dream for both of us, but for the people of Niue it’s something more.
“We hold our breaths every year waiting for them to come. When I hear them, everything is right in the world,” Niuean Vanessa Rex tells me later in the day as we drive the island’s 46km ring road together during a land tour with her company, Explore Niue Tours & Travel.
The next day, Jake and I zip up excitedly into wetsuits next door to the hotel at Niue Blue, one of just a few Padi Eco Centers in the South Pacific.
Whale regulations are strict in Niue to protect the whales, with a limited number of guests allowed in the water at one time and absolutely no free diving down for a closer look allowed. Snorkellers and guides must keep 20m distance, although if the whales approach when surfacing that window can winnow. Already during the briefing, my pulse quickens just imagining an encounter, but nothing could prepare me for what was to come.
Radios crackle on Niue Blue’s dive boats, which accommodate just six snorkellers per trip, as our captain, Roxy Damseaux, communicates with other boats and land-based scouts to locate the most recent spouts and flukes. It’s like finding a moving needle in the ocean’s shifting haystack and eventually, intel prompts our guide, Kaitlin Lawrence, to slip into the water. When she spots the whale far below her, she motions us to gently enter and swim her way.
When we see it, the whale is a dark shadow in the deep with flashes of white pectorals in the blue. A snorkeller who didn’t know it was there might miss it, but for one thing. More than the sight of the humpback, it’s the sound of its solitary crooning that causes me to get misty behind my mask.
Only the male whales sing, out there in the big wide blue looking for another needle in a haystack, a mate. And their complex groans and cries reverberate in my own throat and chest in a way I never could have imagined was possible. Only when the creature finally starts to surface 15 minutes later, coming closer into view as if magnifying before my eyes, does its size register against my own small space in the sea.
Our week in Niue progresses with similar encounters – long and lovely serenades rising from the deep followed by fleeting close encounters at the surface that never last as long as we hope. The whales we see clearly have places to be. In the night when I sleep with my hotel room’s balcony door open wide, their exhalations and the slapping of their pectoral fins wake me from my slumber.
After each excursion to snorkel with them, Jake and I return to the hotel for our nightly sunset happy hour on the terrace to the chatter of other guests who have inevitably seen something more dramatic – one man was snorkelling from the beach when a humpback swam between him and his daughter, he tells us, and another family is giddily reliving long minutes at the surface while a relaxed mother showed off her curious calf.
A grandfather who’d been coming to Niue every year for the past decade to snorkel with humpbacks told us one afternoon that few people get so lucky to see a mother and calf on their first visit, and that we shouldn’t feel disappointed. The hope of the next encounter is what brought him back year after year.
I know that we are the lucky ones, too.
We shared the ocean with a humpback whale. We heard its song in the water and even lilting in the air above the surface, too, when we were back on the boat. Who knew that was even possible? Who knew a place like this was possible?
I’d travel halfway around the world again in a heartbeat just to meet the whales where they are.
Niue Blue | niueblue.com
Explore Niue Tours & Travel | exploreniue.com
Scenic Matavai Resort | scenichotelgroup.co.nz