Whale watching

It has taken me a full 24 hours to calm down after the whale watching trip I went on yesterday afternoon...and writing about it will probably get me excited all over again. It was AMAZING!!

Yesterday, I had the opportunity of a lifetime to swim with a mother humpback whale, her (approximately) one month old calf and an adult male (serving as bodyguard/escort). As part of a group of twelve customers, we went out on a twelve foot covered speed boat to search for signs of whales breaching the surface of the waters around Vava'u, Tonga. I think the owners of Beluga Diving had been tracking the mother, calf, and escort via the town's short wave radio station because they seemed to know exactly where to look. (To digress, this town in so many ways reminds me of a tropical version of the Alaskan village in "Northern Exposure". Remember the local radio station on that t.v. show? Vava'u's commentary is much the same and just as colorful. One boat's call sign is the little blue boat with big red balls, for instance.)

For the next five hours we followed the three whales around the open water and, when they seemed to be surfacing in relatively the same area for a few minutes at a time, a group of four snorkelers would be directed to jump in. We would then follow a guide to ensure that we approached the whales appropriately. For instance, it is dangerous to get between a calf and it's mother. I found this out accidentally when the calf decided to come check me out and left it's mother's side and seemed to be making its way towards me at the surface. Other than knowing that no underwater creature should be touched, I had no idea what to do. It is impossible to anticipate the movements of a baby about three times your length and weighing thousands of pounds. I just froze.

I was so simultaneously excited and in awe that I was completely surprised to feel this force move suddenly beneath me. The mother, a fifty foot, 70,000 pound shiny black mass changed directions and wooshed beneath me like a fish the size of a ship. I really can't tell you how close she was, but I probably could have touched her with my snorkeling fin if I weren't trying to pin myself to the surface to the water and remain as flat and as still as possible.

The mother surfaced on the side of the baby opposite of us and order was preserved, thankfully, with no one coming to blows...literally. They flicked their tales a few times and were off into the deep blue and we were all left speechless with hearts racing. All I could finally managed was, "Oh my God!"

In encounters later in the day, the mother and baby were so peacefully interacting and so seemingly oblivious of us that when they turned their attention on to us, their size immediately switches from fascinating to a potential force that is heart stopping and frightening. We tended to be swimming after them kicking as hard as our legs would allow. They obviously didn't mind us around because they not only did not disappear into the depths below, but they seemed to stop every minute or so as if waiting for us to catch up to them. Expecting them to shortly continue moving, we sometimes briefly overcame the mother's tail. She was usually many feet below the water with the baby floating above her practicing its surfacing and tail flukes. The mother, though, would gracefully begin to move her tail upwards and it was all we could do to back peddle to get out of her way. Her tail never really came close to us since she was well aware of our exact proximity to her, but it definitely got my heart racing.

In another instance of us catching up to the tail of the male escort, he began to dive deep to get away from us which is amazing because it allowed us to see him on an angle and, thus, gave us a much better perspective of his size. Just as our attention was waning expecting him to disappear, he made a U-turn and started back towards us vertically with his belly facing us. I thought he would breech and do a spectacular back flop for us, but he barely broke the surface and then was off again.

The mother and calf both seemed to make eye contact with us at one point in the day. At those moments, I was suddenly deeply aware of just how intelligent these beings are. It seemed as if the mother was trying to communicate to us, "I see you. I mean you no harm and you are welcome as long as you allow my child to just be." She was obviously in control of the situation and she was fully aware of that.

I didn't get any pictures, but others did and, hopefully, they will e-mail them to me. Two of the local whale watching operations, though, have great pictures on their websites. Have a look: Dolphin Pacific (whom I will go whale watching with next Monday) and Dive Vava'u (make sure to look at the whale watching and guest photos links). The pictures on these websites are great depictions of what I saw at close range. It is really hard to convey how deeply impressive and exciting this experience was and why. Maybe it is the unique situation of being in the presence of another mammal that is so many times larger than us humans. Maybe it is the experience of being in the presence of another intelligent being and realizing, through watching a mother with her calf, just how similar we are all at times. Maybe, like the silent view of the peaks of a mountain range, it is the awareness of the majesty and vastness of nature. Right now it feels like all of this and more...