Iris clutched her Playmobil sperm whale as we boarded the small ship for our whale watching trip. At this point I was hoping that she wouldn't be too disappointed. I felt a certain obligation towards her in that I had banged on about how she would be able to enjoy turtles, whales and dolphins in Sri Lanka and that, in this light, leaving behind all your friends, the home and city you have grown up in was no big deal. So far, after four months, she has seen none of the sea-life I promised, not that she has rebuked me for this as yet.
We passed an almost furless, blotchy dog that had a single tuft at the nape of its neck, giving it a slight zombie hyena appearance, and stepped onto the boat. It was about 10 metres long, with a viewing platform set up above the main deck. It soon fired up and we (myself, Iris and Heikki - Anu staying behind with Arlo in trade-off for her having a surfing lesson).
We were served out breakfast in a knotted plastic bag, which contained a polystyrene lunchbox with a plastic wrapped cheese spread sandwich, a slice of pineapple, a square of cake and a banana. I struggled to unwrap and eat this (and Iris's) without losing any plastic overboard - the articles I have recently read about whales and ingested plastic fresh in my mind (and obviously yet to register with the tour operator).
About 1 km from the harbour Iris asked 'Where are the whales?' I start reading her The Witches as we have a long way to go.
After about an hour she is sleeping with her head on my lap. There is no life. The only bird I have seen is a lone egret; I'm really not sure what it was doing so far out to sea. While I had not counted on seeing a whale, and despite reports of dolphins not being sighted, I was quietly confident that I would see some leaping during the trip. But there were no dolphins and almost all of the passengers were asleep.
Just off the prow four flying fish suddenly surfaced glittering sliver and wet-eyed, gliding along a little before disappearing again. I nudged Heikki awake hissing 'flying fish!'; even as I did I realised both that they weren't going to surface again and that Heikki may well have seen them before. He went back to sleep. I also started to imagine if I had imagined the fish. I had hardly seen any life and had been staring at the sun flickering on the waves with my radar on for dolphin fins or the turtles that the surfers had assured me were two a penny away from the shore. About ten minutes later I was relieved to spot a lone flying fish in a similar spot before the prow.
Before too much longer however some blowhole spouts were spotted ('a big one! It's a blue whale' the crew told us) and we cranked up the engine to bear towards them and my excitement grew as I tried to awaken Iris. Shortly after this point, I realised that, despite setting out with no-one else around, there were around eight similar sized vessels all making a bee-line for the spout. We were pack hunting. I began to have some misgivings about the trip. A whale surfaced but it was too close to one of the ships (we were told) so it dived. Apparently 100-150 metres is the golden distance that doesn't scare them yet allows tourists to see something. Anyhow, I took some desperate spout photos and imagined that I might get no closer and that I would be left with a series of photos looking like this:
The slight sour tone was compounded by this noisy hydrofoil. It could have even been designed to frighten whales off and seemed to enjoy flexing its muscles by outpowering our little boats to get to the spouts before us - only the very speed necessitated the noise that then scared off the whale they were pursuing. Also it soon became apparent that this was a little like a Spanish galleon. It was bigger and stronger but clumsy and it couldn't turn around.
Anyhow, at least our tour captain had the sense to hang back from the pack and the fifth or sixth whale to have visibly broken the surface did so close enough to the boat that my fully zoomed lens actually had to be zoomed out a bit to get these shots off.
We passed an almost furless, blotchy dog that had a single tuft at the nape of its neck, giving it a slight zombie hyena appearance, and stepped onto the boat. It was about 10 metres long, with a viewing platform set up above the main deck. It soon fired up and we (myself, Iris and Heikki - Anu staying behind with Arlo in trade-off for her having a surfing lesson).
We were served out breakfast in a knotted plastic bag, which contained a polystyrene lunchbox with a plastic wrapped cheese spread sandwich, a slice of pineapple, a square of cake and a banana. I struggled to unwrap and eat this (and Iris's) without losing any plastic overboard - the articles I have recently read about whales and ingested plastic fresh in my mind (and obviously yet to register with the tour operator).
About 1 km from the harbour Iris asked 'Where are the whales?' I start reading her The Witches as we have a long way to go.
After about an hour she is sleeping with her head on my lap. There is no life. The only bird I have seen is a lone egret; I'm really not sure what it was doing so far out to sea. While I had not counted on seeing a whale, and despite reports of dolphins not being sighted, I was quietly confident that I would see some leaping during the trip. But there were no dolphins and almost all of the passengers were asleep.
Just off the prow four flying fish suddenly surfaced glittering sliver and wet-eyed, gliding along a little before disappearing again. I nudged Heikki awake hissing 'flying fish!'; even as I did I realised both that they weren't going to surface again and that Heikki may well have seen them before. He went back to sleep. I also started to imagine if I had imagined the fish. I had hardly seen any life and had been staring at the sun flickering on the waves with my radar on for dolphin fins or the turtles that the surfers had assured me were two a penny away from the shore. About ten minutes later I was relieved to spot a lone flying fish in a similar spot before the prow.
Before too much longer however some blowhole spouts were spotted ('a big one! It's a blue whale' the crew told us) and we cranked up the engine to bear towards them and my excitement grew as I tried to awaken Iris. Shortly after this point, I realised that, despite setting out with no-one else around, there were around eight similar sized vessels all making a bee-line for the spout. We were pack hunting. I began to have some misgivings about the trip. A whale surfaced but it was too close to one of the ships (we were told) so it dived. Apparently 100-150 metres is the golden distance that doesn't scare them yet allows tourists to see something. Anyhow, I took some desperate spout photos and imagined that I might get no closer and that I would be left with a series of photos looking like this:
The slight sour tone was compounded by this noisy hydrofoil. It could have even been designed to frighten whales off and seemed to enjoy flexing its muscles by outpowering our little boats to get to the spouts before us - only the very speed necessitated the noise that then scared off the whale they were pursuing. Also it soon became apparent that this was a little like a Spanish galleon. It was bigger and stronger but clumsy and it couldn't turn around.
Anyhow, at least our tour captain had the sense to hang back from the pack and the fifth or sixth whale to have visibly broken the surface did so close enough to the boat that my fully zoomed lens actually had to be zoomed out a bit to get these shots off.
