The stunning clip shows a surfer riding a perfect barrel wave as a Southern Right Whale leaps from the water.

Warrnambool's Tom Hanson caught the action and said he wished he was out there surfing and joked the whale looked pretty happy about being out of lockdown.

It's the peak season for whale migration with tens of thousands of the great ocean dwellers on the move to warmer waters.

Almost every year between June and September, female Southern Right whales return to the waters of Warrnambool's Logans Beach to calve.

The whales often swim within a hundred metres of the shore and can be viewed from a specially constructed platform in the sand dunes or from the beach.

Southern Right Whales have been visiting Warrnambool for hundreds of years.

Once they were hunted almost to the point of extinction, but since whaling was outlawed in 1935, their numbers have been growing.

In summer, Southern Right Whales live in the sub-Antarctic. In winter, they migrate to warmer waters around the southern areas of Australia.

The females migrate to the "nursery" areas close to the shore to bear their calves, while the males, yearlings and young adults remain further out to sea.