Pilot whales are not whales at all. They are the second largest dolphin in the ocean, they live in tight family pods, and they are among the most social animals in the sea.
Did you know that pilot whales are actually dolphins? They belong to the oceanic dolphin family, and after the orca they are the second largest dolphin on the planet. The name is a leftover from the old belief that each pod was piloted by a single leader.
There are two species, and they are genuinely difficult to tell apart at sea. The long-finned pilot whale prefers colder water; the short-finned pilot whale prefers warmer water. In Australian waters the two ranges overlap, which is part of why identification is so often left at simply "pilot whale".
If the idea of a dolphin this big is new, it is worth knowing that the dolphins we see every day in Jervis Bay are at the other end of the same family. You can read more about them on our dolphin cruise page.
Pilot whales are the species most associated with mass strandings, and Australia has seen some of the largest events recorded anywhere. More than 80 per cent of Australian whale and dolphin strandings happen in Tasmania, and the largest on record was at Macquarie Harbour in September 2020, when about 470 long-finned pilot whales came ashore. Roughly 110 were refloated. Almost exactly two years later, in September 2022, around 230 stranded near the same place.
The leading explanation is the same thing that makes them remarkable. The bond within a pod is so strong that if one animal gets into trouble in shallow water, the rest follow it in rather than leave it. Add gently shelving, unfamiliar coastline that scatters their echolocation, and a single navigational mistake can take hundreds of animals ashore together.
It is not a sign that the animals are sick. It is a social species behaving socially, in the one situation where that instinct works against it.
Honestly, not easily. Long-finned pilot whales are recorded in waters off southern Australia and New South Wales sits towards the northern edge of that range, but they are a deep-water species that only occasionally comes close to the coast. They are not something anyone can plan a trip around.
What Jervis Bay does have, reliably, is humpbacks on migration from mid-May to mid-November, and resident bottlenose dolphins all year round. If you want to know what you are actually likely to see on the water, the whale cruise page sets out the season, and our round-up of the whales of Jervis Bay and beyond covers the wider family.
Humpbacks pass the bay from mid-May to mid-November. Watch them from the water, alongside the sea cliffs and caves.
