Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Swimming with Giants

I am perched on the edge of the boat, with a mixture of effervescence and trepidation welling inside of me, about to plunge into tanzanite blue water and swim towards a creature that makes even a double decker bus seem small!

I was in the Kingdom of Tonga a couple of weeks ago, on the tropical island of Vava’u, an island paradise in the South Pacific; where white sandy beaches encircle green cute-as-a-button islands and spectacular coral metropolises keep even the most experienced diver wowing for more. But that’s not what drew me to Tonga. It was a dream that I had harboured for the about 13 months and even a light drizzle from the sky was neither going to dampen my spirit, nor chances of spotting the Southern Humpback Whale. But I was not here for a conventional ‘Whale Watch’, Tonga is one of only 3 places in the world where you are legally allowed to swim with a whale, an entirely different wildlife experience.


10 minutes out into the reef, the horizon was interrupted with a splash about a kilometer ahead, a whale has just breached! I jumped up with excitement. Breaching is peculiar only to Humpback whales, they gain enough momentum by thrusting themselves towards the water surface, enough to launch themselves completely out of the water, and in a huge splash crash back; dramatically spectacular but very sloppy. Why they do this is still a mystery, but a topic fertile for debate. But agonizingly, as we approached the whale played hide and seek; diving below everytime we neared and then resurfacing someplace else. Frustrated we scanned the horizon, the guide began singing a Tongan song in praise of the whale, urging it to come back to us and that we meant it no harm. The skipper of the boat has to decide, based on how the whales behave, if it will be safe enough to for us to be in the water with the whale, but more so for the whale, if it would be comfortable to have humans as company. I selfishly prayed for it to settle down!, and then we saw it fluke, allowing us a glimpse of its hump as it arched its back so that it could dive deep, and its tail gracefully perpendicular to the water surface as it sunk, leaving only a huge ring of turbulence as a vestige of its appearance at the surface.

When I was on Tongatapu, the capital island of Tonga, I had met several travelers who had spellbinding experiences, the most fascinating of which I saw on video, where this couple were swimming with a Humpback whale, and from behind her fin appeared a smaller version of herself, a calf gently floating, and what the cameraman thought was the darkness of the deep was infact a enormous male escort! The camera actually squiggling as he realsied what he looked at down below! The video was amazing, and the fact that these giants allow us to take a glimpse into the most private part of their lives is the most awesome wildlife experience ever. Migrating from the cold Antarctic to the warm waters of Tonga, several hundred Humpback whales come to breed and calve, not eating during the 5 month sojourn, untill they head back by the end of October to feast on krill.

I had heard stories about boats hounding the whales, stressing them, some radioing fellow operators to bring more boats if a whale allowed tourists to swim with it. But I saw none of this, in fact quite the contrary, if a whale allowed tourists to swim, the other operators wouldn’t go near it, as it would have already been disturbed enough. Tourists are fore warned that the chance of actually swimming with whales is only a 50% chance, and I met several people who were disappointed not to swim, but happy enough to see them. If only the whales realsied that we each coughed up a small fortune and traveled many a mile just to be with them. Whaling continued in Tonga till 1978, and its no surprise that the conspicuous presence of Chinese and Japanese in a far away island nation is not linked in anything humanitarian. Whale diving gives the locals more than enough economic reason to protect this nursery, and with an already strict regulation on the number of Permits, I think this kind of tourism is good for both mammals. But its also amazing that these whales were also witness to the slaughter of hundreds of their kind, in these very waters, and yet they are still forgiving enough to welcome us into their realm. You cannot doubt that they could have forgotten their holocaust.

The sight of a whale was never uninteresting, every time we glimpsed the black body through the surface, everyone on the boat would sigh in excitement. Their 20m long bodies look like enormous black submarines, their positions betrayed from a distance, by a fluke, breach or a puff of spray when they spout. It was already 4.00pm and my dream of swimming with a whale was fading as fast as the evening light. And then suddenly in the distance we see this Humpback whale and calf breaching with gay abandon. We raced towards them. Luckily this pair seemed quite comfortable with our presence and didn’t dive as our boat drifted towards them. When they were within touching distance from our boat our skipper yelled ‘what are you waiting for?” As quietly as four people who are out of their element could, we slunk into the water, the water was not cold, but I did feel a thousand butteflies in my tummy. My eyes were peeled back as far as they could and I strained to see anything at all, a silhouette or even a shadow at the least, but I saw nothing but blue through my snorkel. Right enough the whale dived as we entered the water. Wet and very disappointed we climbed back onto the boat hoping for it would surface again. It was then that we saw a different mother and calf; we approached gingerly, all of us on the boat held our breath… and then she suddenly melted underwater... and I thought... ‘dont do this to us!’. I was so transfixed that I couldn’t get my fingers to click any photographs. We knew she didn’t dive and was just lurking under the surface and so she had to be around, and then from behind my shoulder I heard this loud ' fooooooooosh', I whirled around to see this puff of spray above the water and the whale floating, she was gigantic, bigger than anything I have ever seen alive. I dived in, and I again opened my eyes as wide as I could to see anything at all in the blue depth, and then……. WHOA!!!!! I screamed in my head! What I thought was the darkness of the deep was infact the dark skin of a whale just below me! For a moment I didn’t know if I had to breath in or out of my snorkel! I realsied it was the calf, but I didn’t expect the calf to be as big as a sedan! It just looked back at me from its saucer sized eye, and when its curiosity got the better of it, its head moved to allow its eye a better view of me. This time I really freaked out and made for the surface, took a breath of air and looked at the sky and dived back down again... the calf was still there, motionless and still watching me, my sense of fear was now replaced by admiration, I could distinctly make out its head, the bumps, the outline of its jaw, the bulbous region around the eye and then the pectoral fins, the few minutes seemed like an eternity. I didn’t see the adult, but I am sure she kept a close watch on us, and it was just the calf that was curious by our presence, as much as I was, and most probably the first time to swim with each other’s kind. It began to move, I watched it swish its tail gently but extremely gracefully to propel itself until it melted into inky blue. I came up to the surface and couldn’t believe what I just saw... did I just see a whale? I pinched myself. We clumsily clamoured back onto the boat with fins on our feet, and we were still recounting what we each had just seen, when out of the blue, a measly 7 meters away from the boat, the 20 meter Humpback adult whale breached! If I described it as gigantic earlier, I correct myself by saying it was by far HUMONGOUS as it leapt out of the water! Akin to a double Decker bus flying through the air, if anyone has seen one do that, crashing thunderously, while splashing water on all of us! We stood voiceless and frozen in stupefaction, etched in memory but not on film I rue. It surfaced again by the boat, this time I knew it would be my last dive of the day, and so I powered my strokes towards them, swimming like crazy through 2m swells. They were quiescently abreast, a mother and calf floating on the surface. They were so graceful, the calf was beneath the mother’s pectoral fin, just as a Dad would with his arm around his son, whisper advice into his eager ears.... it seemed eerily close to home. Every now and then, when the mother swished its tail it created a trail of bubbles that seemed like the follow, like that of a brides white gown. With my ears isolated from all sound underwater, time stood still for me, they were in perfect tune in their environment and I was just a human clumsily trying his best to stay afloat. I was overwhelmed by a sense of awe; every description is a pale shadow of what I have tried to put words to explain. They began to swim away, I haplessly tried to follow, I tried my best to swim in the rough sea swells and was going nowhere, I screamed in my head ‘Hold on! Don’t go!’ they just effortlessly drifted further and further away. Then I just gave up, my mind was fulfilled, and I decided to hold back and just watch them swim away. They quietly melted away. I broke to the surface, I looked up and what I saw was a huge tail in front of me, fluking as they dived, first the mother and then its calf, nothing measurising up to be able to see it from eye level in the water. That was it... I have never felt as fulfilled as that ever in my life. I rolled on my back, and looked at the cloudy sky and just thanked God for allowing me an experience of a lifetime. No one said a word as we climbed back on the boat, we all just beamed smiles.

On our way back, there were 3 dolphins that followed our boat, playfully breaking out of the water and swimming right alongside us, I would have normally gotten prodigiously excited, but when you swim with a whale, dolphins hardly seemd like small fry! I knew from then on that conventional whale watching had been ruined for me forever.

1 comment:

  1. wowee ... some experience that ... the only mammal I have sighted n got a pic with was a Dolphin washed ashore at Kovalam Beach, Kerala, early Apr. last year .....
    U should have taken a ride on the Southern Humpback Whale m8.
    might I also add, your imagery has found me envious of ur enthralling experience .... but I did savour some it at least thanks to the above entry :D

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