donsilcock
Contributor
It has been called “the premier marine attraction on the planet”... A touch of hype perhaps, but I can vouch for the fact that of all the big animal encounters I have personally experienced, the annual aggregation of Giant Australian Cuttlefish is up there in my top five!
It happens from around the middle of May each year - just off the beach at Whyalla in South Australia's Spencer Gulf. Giant Cuttlefish are fairly common all around the south of Australia and they are typically solitary animals.
Come winter in the southern hemisphere they start to aggregate in groups of around 10 to mate. Everywhere that is except Whyalla where there are tens of thousands of them. No exaggeration!!
And... they are all focused on one thing - sex.... For the big bull males, this is their last chance as they will be dead in 5-6 weeks at the end of the mating season. While the young females are spectacularly promiscuous!!!
All this is happening just off the beach and is one hell of a shore dive. This year would have been my fourth trip to Whyalla but the pandemic put an end to that so I put together a "complete guide" to the whole thing based on the earlier trips and last year's images which was widely regarded as one of the best aggregations in many years.
No commercial angle and I just want to spread the word about this incredible and quite unique event as the more people know about it the better are the chances is will not be exploited again as happened in 1997 and 1998 when greedy fishermen took hundreds of thousands of cuttlefish!
Here is the link to the complete guide to the Australian Giant Cuttlefish
It happens from around the middle of May each year - just off the beach at Whyalla in South Australia's Spencer Gulf. Giant Cuttlefish are fairly common all around the south of Australia and they are typically solitary animals.
Come winter in the southern hemisphere they start to aggregate in groups of around 10 to mate. Everywhere that is except Whyalla where there are tens of thousands of them. No exaggeration!!
And... they are all focused on one thing - sex.... For the big bull males, this is their last chance as they will be dead in 5-6 weeks at the end of the mating season. While the young females are spectacularly promiscuous!!!
All this is happening just off the beach and is one hell of a shore dive. This year would have been my fourth trip to Whyalla but the pandemic put an end to that so I put together a "complete guide" to the whole thing based on the earlier trips and last year's images which was widely regarded as one of the best aggregations in many years.
No commercial angle and I just want to spread the word about this incredible and quite unique event as the more people know about it the better are the chances is will not be exploited again as happened in 1997 and 1998 when greedy fishermen took hundreds of thousands of cuttlefish!
Here is the link to the complete guide to the Australian Giant Cuttlefish
