A video showing the whale surfacing was posted online by the head of the Star Sailing Club, Ilya Saldaev, reports The Phuket News’ Russian-language sister newspaper Novosti Phuketa.
This was the second whale sighting in local waters since August, the report noted.
“Today we were yachting and met a whale not far from Racha. Who knows what breed? Now is the time to go to sea. And the prices are not yet cosmos, and you can meet whales,” Mr Saldaev said in posting the video online.
One person commented that it might have been a blue whale, while another noted that Mr Saldaev and his guests could have been lucky enough to have seen a humpback whale.
The last documented meeting with a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) in local waters occurred at the end of August. The sighting was in Phang Nga Bay, and the whale was busily heading somewhere from Phi Phi to the Racha Islands.
The Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) have not yet confirmed whether the whale in the video and sighted south of Phuket yesterday was a humpback whale, but they did confirm the sighting in August was that of a humpback.
Humpback whales are not rare or endangered, but, as the DMCR clarified, they are seen very rarely in Thai waters. More precisely, a confirmed sighting occurred only once ‒ in 2009 in the area of Phuket’s Ao Por Bay.
Relevant departments, such as the aforementioned DMCR, did not comment on the current sighting of the whale. Mr Saldaev’s video showed that the boat did not approach the marine mammal and did not create any threat to it. People watched the whale from afar, but it appeared, apparently, for a very short time.
Maritime officials urge caution to anyone that may similarly come across the whales in the waters off Phuket. In such a situation, people are advised to keep their distance and sail with caution and respect. Also, if possible, people are urged to report further sightings to the authorities, ideally stating date, time, location and/or coordinates.