We had a 30nm journey from Savusavu to Koro Island which was scheduled to take us 6 hours.  Forecast showed light winds, but we still hoped to have enough wind to sail.  Unfortunately, we did not. It ended being a slow motor.  What can cheer up a motor day?  Whales!

However, we were blessed with two incredibly rare sightings!

Humpback Whale

We were only about an hour outside of Vanua Levu when we spotted a humpback whale!  Typically, whales only pass through Fiji on their way to Vanuatu. 

But the dive operators were telling us that they are seeing more and more sightings of whales this year.

To our great amazement we spotted this beauty hanging out and playing.

This beautiful teen had a lot of barnacles on its nose, but it stayed with us for about 20 minutes. 

This whale came right up to the side of the boat!  Such a beautiful sight to see.

We left after 20-minutes as we did not want to overburden the humpback whale.

Pod of Pilot Whales

We see something on the horizon as we are still high off of our uber rare humpback whale sighting.

We thought it was a pod of dolphins.

But as we got closer we realized they were too big to be dolphins and they had round heads.  

It was a pod of pilot whales! 

We had never seen a pilot whale in person – let alone an entire pod.  What a rare treat!

In case you need decent photos of each whale species:

Dolphins

To wrap up our awesome day, a pod of dolphins came swimming up to the boat.

So, even though we had to motor the entire 30nm to Koro, we had two incredibly rare opportunities to see whales!  

Our blog posts run 4-6 weeks behind actual live events.

We discovered these whales on our passage to Koro Island around mid-July, 2025.

Check out our adventures and sightseeing escapades in Somosomo.