Whale watching
Peaceful, stately, plump, playful, sociable and magnificent creatures. These were my first impressions, on seeing a humpback whale in the wild.
Last weekend I went on a whale-watching cruise, off the northern coast of NSW. The crew offered passengers tea and biscuits and free sea-sick pills; There was plenty of space for twenty passengers – tourists, families and amateur photographers - inside and outside the cabin, and rails to hang onto in a tossing open sea. Comfortable seats and tables inside the cabin, in case nature decided to give the hunters a touch of wind or rain. Quite unlike the morbid conditions for crew I’d read of in the whale-chasing book ‘Moby Dick’.
Twenty minutes out from the harbour heads we saw, and heard, a whale blowing to the surface. There was a pod of four humpbacks within a few metres of the boat, coasting north for the winter. There’s little wonder our first whales seemed so easy to find ; perhaps they found us. The ship’s captain said he’d had a hundred percent success rate in spotting whales each cruise. He said there were an estimated 10,000 whales migrating north along the coast this season.
This pod was enjoying a lazy day in sun stroked water. They idled along, a few minutes near the surface, then made a dive for about six minute, then back to the surface. They weren’t interested in performing spectacular tricks you see in tourist brochures, no spectacular leaps to break into the air; no rolling, no waving of their fins.
There was a healthy swell running, water rising about two metres, and the whales seemed determined to keep at least one swell between themselves and the boat. This gave them some privacy, they were down one dip in the ocean, we were in another, and a wall of water between us.
The swell meant some of the passengers on the vessel weren’t all that interested in the water or its whales; they tried to avoid eye contact with the swell. They had their faces buried in paper sea-sick bags, or were queued for a turn in the toilets. Some hung over rails, looking green and grey down into the blue sea.
I can say, with some luck, I didn’t fall victim to a churning stomach.
The boat followed the pod for 90 minutes. I assume it was the same pod all the way; sometimes we lost contact and waited till we saw more slicks on the surface of the water, and headed just north of that spot.
Photography was difficult. I didn’t know if the whales would surface one side of the boat, or the other., If I would be setting the exposure to shoot into the sun, or with the sun at my back. The sea moved, the boat bobbed up and down in the swell, the whales were moved up and down the swell, appearing and diving in seconds, and I hung grimly onto my camera, and the side rail, trying to focus. Of 250 shots, I accept three as OK.
On the return to harbour there was time to think about what I’d seen.
There’s nothing special about eating whale meat, that justifies slaughtering them. There’s nothing special about their blubber, except for their own survival. We humans can always find alternative sources to whale blubber products.
In my time I have seen whale skeletons in museums. I’ve seen a whale skeleton on the beach at Bicheno, in Tasmania. I’ve seen whalebones in corsets and carved bones in scrimshaws.. I’ve seen little whales in commercial aquaria.
I’ve read Moby Dick, and seen TV news of their carcasses being hauled onto modern whaling boats. But none of these second hand encounters prepared me for their size, and grace.
My brief meeting with the humpbacks, living, breathing and caring for each other was an unusual but also an ordinary experience;
More than just a nice afternoon’s amusement; this was nature behaving normally. I saw these whales as every-day creatures as ordinary as oxygen and as probably just as essential. The sooner they are recognised for not being alien, the better