It's 1.40pm and Rob Harcourt and his small boatload of researchers are just a stone's throw away from a rare southern right whale and her newborn calf. They're waiting for the perfect moment to draw even closer and fire a tiny plastic dart into the side of the 50-tonne sea mammal.
The migrating new mother has halted for a rest in the calm waters of Long Bay, Malabar, while her three-week-old calf splashes around her.
On a grassy knoll directly opposite the basking whales, a local mum and her own toddler are playing out a similar scene; the tiny tot buzzes among other watchers as the mother relaxes on the grass.
It's anything but child's play, however, for Associate Professor Harcourt, the director of marine science at Macquarie University, and his team. One incautious move could provoke a fatal blow from the mother's massive tail.
Their research is part of the Federal Government's southern right whale recovery plan. The species numbers are dwindling and it is now listed as endangered. Harcourt says his work will provide information that Australia presents to the International Whaling Commission.
"This type of research helps inform and strengthen the argument for cessation of so-called scientific whaling."
At 1.45pm, with the marine scientists just seconds away from firing the dart, the inquisitive calf - which is larger than their craft - approaches the side of the boat. The dart is withdrawn as the mother watches her offspring from 150 metres away.
Patience is critical; getting a skin sample from such a rare creature is close to finding the Holy Grail for the research team, particularly as comparisons of the mother's DNA with earlier samples from other whales may prove she is part of an extremely endangered sub-population. At 1.52pm the seaborne biopsy is put on hold once again as the calf now swims under the boat.
These slow moving mammals were historically regarded by whalers as "the right whale to kill".
But to Harcourt, now living his boyhood dream of being a marine biologist, the right whale is not such an easy target.
"Every sample is very important. It's taken us six years to get five samples because they don't come up here very often and stay long enough for us to get near them," he says.
The team is dedicated to its mission of making sure "these guys are around for hundreds of years" but it is a daunting task. There used to be about 60,000 southern right whales in the southern hemisphere. Now they've dwindled to an estimated 1500 in Australian waters alone.
Harcourt hopes that the mother and calf's stopover at Malabar is an early outcome of the protection plan and will become an annual event for others.
"Long Bay was probably a regular whale haunt and the reason they haven't been seen here is because we nearly killed all of them," he says. "When Europeans first settled in Wellington harbour, New Zealand, they couldn't sleep at night because of the sound of all the whales rumbling in the harbour. There were certainly many more here too. There used to be a lot and now there are very, very few."
At 2.07pm the mother approaches the boat and submerges. The crucial moment nears. A couple of minutes later, both mother and calf surface. The researchers move closer. The whales sink and resurface and finally present an opportunity. The dart is fired, the target hit.
Fifteen seconds later the animals are 50 metres away, the mother apparently unconcerned about the sample just taken from her skin.
Harcourt explains the procedure: "It is a little plastic dart with a stainless steel head on it, like a tiny apple core and it takes a small plug of skin about the size of an eraser on the end of a pencil. All it does is bounce off the whale's side and takes a little scraping."
By 2.10pm, a 200-metre gap now separates the whales from the scientists, who slowly head back to the bay's boat ramp. By the time Harcourt and his team are heading back to their office with their genetic sample, the mother and calf are swimming around the bay as if nothing ever happened.
Results from the DNA will not be delivered overnight and the protection plan itself is still in the early stages. "It's too short a time to see results," says Harcourt. "These animals only breed once every three years or so and it's only a five-year plan. You're talking about managing these animals over decades."
On the bright side, the estimated annual rate of increase for southern right whales in Australia is around 7 per cent. A female may live to 100, allowing many years to breed.