VIDEO: Rarely seen dwarf minke whale spotted exploring Tathra

"I was filming some humpback whales feeding out off Kianinny on Saturday afternoon and as I was flying my drone back, a family and handful of people said they thought they'd seen an orca swimming near the rocks," he said.

Mr Dixon said he excitedly sent his drone back out to see if he could spot what kind of whale it was, but due to the late afternoon's low light he couldn't see it.

"I just put the camera back down near the water and let it film without moving and when I got home I went through it and realised there was something," he said.

Mr Dixon said due to the white markings and size, he understood why it was easily mistaken as a baby orca, however it never came up to the surface so it had been hard to identify the whale.

"It was swimming near the dolphins, which were popping up to the surface but this thing never did, it just skimmed along the top and then went back down, so I wasn't too sure what it was," he said.

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Mr Dixon said he immediately sent the video off to scientists at the Australian Marine Mammal Centre to help him in identifying the sea creature.

"They're not a 100 per cent certain but they said the only thing it could possibly be was a dwarf minkey whale, which is very rare," he said.

Mr Dixon said since receiving the identification, he compared his footage against other videos of dwarf minke whales online and said it looked "very similar".

Mr Dixon said he did some research on the species and found that they were usually sighted further north, a long way from the Sapphire Coast.

"It looks like they normally hang up off near cairns and the tropics, so it was pretty rare to see one," he said.

Mr Dixon said he felt very lucky to have captured the footage, considering he'd only had four minutes left on his drone battery.

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"I thought if it's swimming 10 metres off the rocks near the dolphins and I've got four minutes left on the drone battery, I'll just fly it up over the water and push play and let it record," he said.

"It was a very special event for myself and the handful of people that were there."

Mr Dixon's footage over the weekend was one special moment among many during this year's migration season.

With Orcas being photographed in Merimbula in late June and a menagerie of marine animals surprising fishermen near Eden in late July, where two fishing mates sighted 100 dolphins, 10 whales, leaping yellowfin tuna, seals, a one metre long squid, and a shark - it's been an exciting time for the Sapphire Coast.

Other special whale sightings included Mr Dixon's rare footage of a of a southern right whale visiting Tathra in early July.

Mr Dixon said the whale migration season this year had seen humpbacks coming through in big numbers, however southern right whales sightings had been quite low.

"They've [southern right whales] been very slow this year but like scientists say there's only like 10 to 12 that hang around this area, so it's very rare to see them," he said.

"Humpbacks though have been coming through in big numbers and they've been doing lots of feeding off Tathra, Merimbula and Eden," he said.

Mr Dixon said in the times he'd filmed the humpback whales this season, he'd noticed many of them performing surface and lunge feeding.

"Lunge feeding is when they're swimming sideways on the surface and they lunge out with their mouths to eat," he said.

Mr Dixon said he'd witnessed a Humpback Whale pod having a feeding frenzy in the last weekend of July, where he'd seen scores of whales feeding 4km of the coast of Tathra.

"They were there for probably three days and it was the most that I've seen this season in one group, there was a couple hundred," he said.

Mr Dixon said he was yet to start seeing the mothers and calves come through the Sapphire Coast.

"There's been a couple but not in big numbers, at the moment it's mainly been the males that are heading south and the females and their calves shouldn't be too far away," he said.

Mr Dixon said he expected to see whales in the Sapphire Coast until mid December.