A rare face-to-face encounter with a dwarf minke whale on the Great Barrier Reef
A whale the size of a large van drifted into view, turned alongside the rope Marcia Riederer was holding, and fixed her with what she describes as a direct, searching stare. The moment was brief in physical terms, yet expansive in memory: she felt time slow, cried in the water, and came away with an image that now stands out as one of the most striking records of an encounter many people will never experience. The photograph, rendered in black and white, strips away distraction and leaves only the animal’s eye, the curve of its head, and the impression of mutual attention.
Riederer’s encounter took place in June 2023 on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, where dwarf minke whales gather predictably during June and July. Her image later earned her the title of best fine art photographer at the Ocean Photographer of the Year awards in London in September 2025. The recognition came not just for composition, but for the rare quality of the moment itself: a large wild animal appearing to examine a human observer with unusual focus and composure.
The emotional force of that exchange is not hard to understand. These whales are among the most elusive large marine mammals in the region, yet here one approached closely enough for the photographer to register its eye, the markings along its throat, and the precision of its movement. In the water, the effect was less like a fleeting sighting than a prolonged interaction. Riederer spent several days among a total of 40 inquisitive whales, and on one occasion eight circled at once, one coming to arm’s length.
Curious behavior, courtship displays, and what the reef still does not reveal
Researchers have spent decades trying to understand why these whales come to this part of the reef and how they behave once they arrive. Alastair Birtles, a professor of marine biology at James Cook University, has studied dwarf minke whales for more than 30 years and says their movements remain surprisingly opaque. Nobody knew they were present on the Great Barrier Reef until the 1980s, and even two decades after that, their next destination remained uncertain.
One leading explanation is that the outer edge of the reef serves as a seasonal meeting ground where mixed groups of mature males, females, and adolescents gather to learn courtship and mating behaviors. Birtles describes the animals performing belly presentations, in which a whale rolls partly onto its side and displays its white underside to another whale, or sometimes to a person or even a dinghy. In marine mammals, such behavior can serve more than one purpose: it can function as part of courtship and also help the animal use binocular vision to inspect nearby objects with more precision.
The posture is biologically revealing. A whale rolling to one side is not just moving for show; it is actively selecting how to see the world. In the case of human encounters, that can create the unmistakable impression that the animal is studying the swimmer as carefully as the swimmer is studying it.
“They are so curious; they want to look at us just like we are looking at them,” Riederer said. Her account matches Birtles’s own description of the experience, which he calls among the most intense animal-human interactions possible because the animals repeatedly return for another look, coming close and lingering for long periods. Some visitors, he said, burst into tears after hours in the water.
The encounter is powerful, but it is not casual. In Australia, touching a dwarf minke whale is illegal because it can injure both whale and swimmer. A startled animal could become entangled in equipment or harm itself in an abrupt movement, and close contact also creates a route for disease transmission in either direction. The rules exist for a reason: a whale that seems calm at the surface remains a wild animal with a large body, powerful musculature, and little tolerance for avoidable disturbance.
One sentence from the water captures the experience best: the whales came to the people, not the other way around.
Migration remains partly mapped, while climate stress grows around a small whale with a long journey
The dwarf minke whale is the second smallest whale in the world, reaching about 8 meters in length and weighing roughly 4 to 5 tonnes. Its size, however, makes its journey more remarkable rather than less. In 2013, scientists at James Cook University began tagging some of the animals, and one whale known as Spot was recorded traveling more than 7,000 kilometers down the Australian east coast, around Tasmania, and then into sub-Antarctic waters.
The route mirrors the migration patterns of humpback whales, despite the dramatic difference in body size. Dwarf minkes feed on krill and lanternfish in the Southern Ocean, and that dependence on productive cold-water ecosystems makes their journey vulnerable to environmental change. Birtles says changing currents and temperatures pose a major threat because the species may already be closer to its biological limits than larger whales are. A small whale undertaking a vast migration has less margin for error in an ocean that is warming and shifting around it.
Their vocal behavior also sets them apart. The species is known for a distinctive sound nicknamed the “Star Wars vocalisation,” a reference to the pulsing, synthetic quality of the call. The name may be playful, but the biological reality is not: this is an animal that remains difficult to observe, difficult to count, and difficult to study at scale. There are no accurate population estimates, and even basic questions about abundance remain unanswered.
Riederer’s photograph matters because it does what field science often struggles to do on its own: it turns an elusive species into a face. Birtles said photographers like her help scientists identify whales and document individuals that one observer alone might miss. In that sense, the image is more than art. It is a record of behavior, a conservation reminder, and a visual argument for paying attention to a species that still slips through much of the scientific net.
Riederer hopes the image does something else as well. Looking into the whale’s eye, she said, makes the animal seem less like an abstraction and more like a fellow creature with fear, curiosity, hunger, offspring, and a place in the world. For a species still holding so many of its secrets, that may be the most useful lesson of all.