"Tales from the Road"
Today is our first day in and on the water, seeking out sperm whales off Dominica Island.
The stories can be found on our “The Daily’s” page.
We won’t be updating our blog during our time here on Dominica, other than this post of course.
I will be updating the trip report at the end of everyday.
So if you want to know what is going on, please visit the link I will be sharing at the end of this post.
Thank you so much.
Blogging will resume when the sperm whale trip ends…
Day Six, our final day of the trip, and it was the BEST day of the trip too.
We left at 9am this morning and motored out to the South side of the island to listen for sperm whales. We knew the Utensils pod went south when the pilot whales arrived three days ago, but we were hoping they would come back.
The Utensils pod is one of the friendliest pods off Dominica, and is great for interactions. We dropped the hydrophone and listened, but zero clicks. No sperm whales were around. So we decided to head North and see if the sperm whales were on the other side of the island.
While in route, we found out why the sperm whales were gone from the South side. The pilot whales had returned. The pod we encountered on day three was back. When we found them three days ago, they were headed South and out into the Atlantic. The pilots returned and were now headed North.
At this point we knew any search for sperm whales would be difficult, so we decided to embrace what nature has presented to us and just hang out with the pilot whales.
I am so glad we did.
We positioned the boat 100 yards in front of the whales and killed the motor. The pilot whales did something we did not expect, they swam straight up to the boat, stopped swimming and all of them began spy hoping. We were all putting on swim gear, but this sort of stopped us in our tracks. What were they doing?
A quick video of the pilot whales behavior. I was torn between capturing topside and getting in the water, so its a short video.
A group of about thirty whales were all on the surface, not swimming, just hovering there by our boat, seemly taking turns sticking their faces out of the water, looking at us. It was insane!!!
I was torn between filming the spectacle and grabbing my kit and jumping in the water. Bill, our captain said he has never seen this behavior before. Not in the numbers that we were seeing today.
I captured a few stills, and tried to record a little bit of video, but my need to get in the water won me over, and I put the topside camera down and went to grab my swim gear.
I am trying really hard to find the words to describe what we all experienced today, it really is hard to find the words. To quote Jodie Foster from the movie Contact… “they should of sent a poet, no words.” I know it sounds cheesy, but the day was above and beyond anything I normally have experienced with whales.
The whales would hang out, then swim off. We would get back on the boat, get ahead of them and jump in again. The whales would swim back to the boat and interact with us again, and we did this over and over again for five hours straight.
The whale would swim up to us, roll, and play, and hang around us and then swim off again. Sometimes dropping down into the depths, other times just swim off into the distance. It was true magic.
After about three hours we decided to give them a break, eat lunch and just watch them from the boat. I was about to eat my wrap when the pilot whales swam back to the boat to find out what happened to us. It seemed they wanted to know where we went. They again were hovering right by the boat, some of them were spy hopping, waiting to see if we were going to jump back in.
My heart and mind were exploding.
So we scrapped the lunch idea and back into the water we went. We continued swimming with them. It was non-stop… the whales kept coming up to us. One of the juveniles took a big interest in our cameras and kept coming up close to get a good look at the dome ports. Maybe it was looking at it’s reflection, I don’t know?
This went on for the next two hours.
On our final jump of the day, we jumped in and the whales dove down to avoid us. We took that as a sign that they were done and it was time to call it a day.
The emotions on the boat were at an all time high. All of us were on fire… this was the stuff that dreams are made of. I have had some amazing moments in the water, but this day ranks up there with the very best of them.
Sandy, one of our friends on the trip said it best, “Days like today are why I would want to live forever.”
Wanted to say a special thanks to the beautiful people of Dominica, and a HUGE thank you to our friends who joined us out there, it was an amazing week. Luv you guys.
Until the next one and thank you guys for reading.
Day Four of our sperm whale expedition off Dominica was ok. We found the sperm whales, but they are still a bit skittish from yesterday’s pilot whale visit. Most of the whales have moved out into deeper waters. A bit too far for us to follow, so we didn’t try to find them.
We did have a pod still hanging around, but this group is unknown and did not want anything to do with us. We tried a few jumps, but the animals kept their distance. We did get a few jumps in with them, but nothing like our previous days. So we decided to leave them alone and try and find a friendlier pod.
Sadly we did not have any luck.
During the down time, our friends Tatiana and Graeme recorded some clips for a project they are working on.
We did get a few jumps in with them, but nothing like our previous days. We had some fun passes (while we were on the boat), from spotted, and Frasier’s dolphins., thats always fun. Plus we were in good company, so it was a nice day... But hoping for some better action tomorrow.
We still have two more days. Hoping the sperm whales return so we can finish up this trip with a bang.
Until tomorrow, thanks for reading.
May 1, 2022 - Day One of Dominica was a good day. We got skunked for sperm whales, but we still had a fantastic day at sea.
We spent quite a few hours searching for sperm whales in the morning. Sadly there were no signs of any whales. No clicks on the hydrophone, no blows in the distance… nada. We did encounter a small pod of pygmy killer whales, but they disappeared just as quickly as they had appeared.
Finally, our captain saw a few dorsal fins in the distance and motored over. It was a pod of pilot whales swimming slowly along the surface. We quickly got ready and jumped in. The pod was extremely curious and came in close to look at us. I was guessing around ten individuals, turned out it was more… a lot more. We guesstimated around 20 - 25 whales in this group.
We took turns jumping in with them and had an amazing two-hour session with these beautiful whales. This was my first real-time spent with this predatory species, and I was trying to soak them in and learn as much as I could about them.
The pilot whales were swimming very slowly and in no real direction. They were all spread out, just swimming in what seemed like a big wide circle, doing random patterns. I do not know a lot, but what I am guessing and what makes the most sense to me was that they seemed be hunting.
Possibly hunting giant squid below, using sonar to detect when a squid rises from the deep, or maybe they were hunting a deep water whale, like a beaked whale or something. Not sure, but on our final jump of the day, the whales all gathered up close, and then one of them let out a whistle, and they all dove down deep and disappeared. We did not hear the whistle when we were in the water, but I captured the whistle on my gopro and the whales all dove right after. It was awesome.
We didn’t get sperm whales today, but the ocean gave us a unique and wonderful gift for our first day in Dominica. I can’t wait for tomorrow.
August 8, 2021 - Sunday, my day off. Wow, what a week it has been. It is hard to put into words what we experienced out here. However, I feel lucky and blessed to have been out here, especially with the covid craziness. It was an adventure just trying to get to this Island. Sadly our buddy Tom was supposed to be here, but due to covid restrictions, he wasn't able to make it. My heart broke, not just because I wanted to see and share another adventure with my dear friend, but also because he could not be out here with us to experience the magic of this place. Miss and luv you my friend.
Dominica truly is a special place. The Island is magical and rugged, and wild. It is so green, thick with vegetation. The whole Island is mountains, and the villages are built on mountainsides. It has 365 rivers, and waterfalls, and hot springs, coming from active volcanoes. The Island looks like it belongs in a Jurassic Park movie, just spectacular.
The bonus is it also has a population of sperm whales that live here year-round, which is why we are here. There are no words to describe the magic we experienced this week. Everything you hope to see when diving with animals like this we did. We experienced every behavior, except courting mating behavior, because that happens in winter, not summer. Of course, no birthing either.
This week the behaviors we witnessed were; social behaviors (playing, rubbing, play biting, or gumming each other), sleeping whales, babies drinking milk, babies trying to play with us, adults trying to play with us (zero social distancing when they were doing that), breaching, spy hopping, it was fire... WOW, WOW, WOW!
We also got to see pilot whales and pygmy killer whales, although they did not let us near them. We tried, but they wanted nothing to do with us. We had a massive pod of Fraser's dolphins come through, as well as Atlantic spotted dolphins. No water time, but I did manage a few jumping shots of them. I still need better images of the Fraser's jumping, but we saw them almost every day, so I'm hoping for another chance.
We all captured so much video and stills of the whales; it is hard to figure out what to share on social media and this blog. The most challenging images to capture during this trip were breaching sperm whale shots because they do not breach very often, so you have to be ready when they do. However, with a lot of effort and the help our guides, I managed a couple of photos of it. Unfortunately, it is still not the one I am after, but I have another week to try.
Breaching sperm whale
Overall it was a fantastic trip with incredible encounters and thrilled sunburnt people. A huge thanks go out to our friends who joined us this week. Thank you for joining us out there… we luv you guys and looking forward to another adventure with you guys.
Thank you guys for reading, thanks you for comments and thank you for following along on this crazy journey of ours, I truly appreciate it my friends.
Me snapping some shots of the whales. Image by Jean Dubois
August 2, 2021 - Day one in the water, and DAMN, DAMN, DAMN! What a day. When you plan a trip to a place like Dominica for one of the most coveted whale species in our ocean, you want it to be a good trip, and you want your guests to have excellent experiences. You have high expectations, and you hope for quality encounters, but the reality is that you never know what nature will gift you with, so you keep your expectations low and hope for some good wildlife karma to come your way.
Well, today exceeded anything I dreamed we were going to experience out here. WOW-WOW-WOW! I was blown away by what we all had today. I knew we were going to find whales, I just did not know how quickly we would find them, that was a big surprise to me. Not 30 minutes after we left port, we found sperm whales. We found one pod, or clan, or group, of sperm whales. Our guides did not know this group very well, and the whales were reluctant to let us hang out with them for very long. Thankfully the guides here do not harass the whales and so we did not spend much time with them.
It turns out there are about 20 different families of sperm whales out here, and some of them are friendlier than others. The next group we found tolerated us for a little while but then pushed out for quieter waters.
We had perfect weather today. Plenty of sun and glassy calm seas. Of course it made it harder to find the whales, you need a bit of wind to carry their spray un in the air so they can be easier to find.
We had a good encounter with two sleepy whales. They hung out on the surface for about ten minutes before they dove down to hunt for giant squid. That is right, giant squid… Our guide told us that they had found a giant squid tentacle on the surface, back in November, that was twenty feet long. Crazy.
We left that second group and hit the jackpot! We found another family of whales and spent the rest of our time with them. These guys were awesome. They had a wee baby with them, and it was so friendly and curious, it repeatedly kept coming to check us out. The baby was so close at times we could have touched it. We didn't, of course, but it would come in really close. During one encounter, the baby swam straight for us and almost ran over Eldad, we captured the whole thing on video. What a hell of a moment.
During our time out there, we encountered a superpod of Fraser's dolphins. This was my first time meeting this species; they have pink bellies, which are really cool looking. I tried for some porpoising shots. Unfortunately, I did not get the image that I had in my mind's eye, but I got a keeper.
During the day, the whales scatter, I am sure hunting in different areas, searching for the best hunting spots. Towards the end of the day, they started regrouping. We finished our session with five of them, the adults, rolling and playing around with the babies and juveniles. It was such a rush to be in the water with these whales, hearing and feeling those clicks as they swam slowly by us.
Overall this was one of the best days of whale swimming I have ever experienced. Thankfully this is day one. We still have five more days to go. Well, I have another six days with our next group, but who's counting? Lol
Thank you for reading.
August 1, 2021 - Today is our first full day in Dominica. Tomorrow we head out for day one searching for sperm whales. I am excited about kicking things off and getting things started. I am filled with excitement for whatever nature has in store for us.
Today, three of our guests (Terry, Lisa, and Eldad) and I went on a land tour to visit some rivers, waterfalls, and hot springs in Dominica. All I can say is I am blown away by how beautiful Dominica is. Just wow. This island is so green, and it has so many mountains and rivers. You feel almost claustrophobic with how many and how close they all are. Dominica boasts that they have 365 rivers on the island, one for every day of the year.
Above are some beautiful sights on Dominica, including this wild shot… A hurricane caused this tree to fall in 1979 on top of this school bus, and it has been there ever since. FYI, no one was hurt when the tree fell.
Below is this Puerto Rican Crested Anole (new species for me). I saw this little beauty in the grass eating this earth worm. I was trying to find a good angle to photograph it, but the grass kept covering it up, I just could not find a good spot. I was creeping around slowly because I did not want to scare it off. Suddenly it jumped onto this rock in perfect sunlight and stayed there. It looked like it wanted a better view of this strange human crawling around in the grass, trying to figure out what I was doing, and if I was a threat. I couldn’t of asked for a better moment to capture of this anole. Felt lucky and privileged to have been able to snap this. A great start to a new adventure!
We had a lot of fun doing the tourist thing, the waterfalls were amazing, we enjoyed swimming in the rivers, getting mudded up at the hot springs. It is wicked because active volcanos naturally heat the water. It was just so damn cool.
While we were out sightseeing, I searched for wildlife, birds, replies, and mammals. There are quite a few endemic species on this island: some really beautiful lizards and birds. I am hoping to find as many as possible, especially the; Fantastic Least Gecko, Dominican Anole, Lesser Antillean Iguana, Imperial Amazon Parrot, Red-Necked Amazon Parrot, and some beautiful hummingbirds. I will be trying to find these species every chance I get.
Ok. it is late, but I needed to finish this report and I had to watch tonite’s Gold Cup Finals… The US vs. Mexico. The US wins. A fun way to finish up a nice day.
Tomorrow it begins!!!
