There She Blows! 🐳

Whales! Finally after weeks of waiting we finally got our first whale sightings! Before you all get too excited we only got to watch them for about 5 minutes each as they all disappeared shortly we located them. My advisor said that the season seems to have not picked up and that in a few weeks (hopefully) we'll see many more and maybe get to actually observe behaviors.

Below are the only shots I was able to get, but hey, it's still whales 🐋

Maybe I should back up and provide some context and details. Early Wednesday morning (7:30AM to be specific, which required a 5:30AM wake up call), A.A and I headed to catch the ferry to the island of Contadora. We visited this island a couple of weeks ago to evaluate its potential for a spot to intercept tourists to take our whale watching survey. We also wanted to see if we could get a chance to go out on a routine whale watch expedition (one of the local tours, offered by one of the fishermen). As we checked into our hotel we asked the woman at reception if there was a place we could arrange to take a whale tour. They admitted that there were only a few whales at the moment (according to the locals the whales do not show up until September or even October), but they located a very nice local man named Tito who agreed to take us out on his boat (all 3 of us for $40/hour). We got a golfcart lift down to one of the main beaches and Tito helped us into his boat. 

[boat picture]

"Look Ma, no hands!" This is how Tito drove his boat for the majority of the tour.
He was very dedicated to helping us find whales

After two hours we were only able to find a single whale, which we followed for a couple of surfaces. The tricky part of whale watching (for those of you unfamiliar with the activity) is that the whales rarely stay still and tend to move quite quickly. This means that they typically will come up for 1-2 breaths (blows) and then will dive down, and can cover a few miles in a single dive. Mothers with calves will move a little slower and may linger if the baby is playing or dawdling for some reason. But individual adults(which were the majority of the whales we saw) have things to do and places to be, so they don't hang around. It is very likely that as we are predicting, the presence of the boats is scary to them and increases their desire to get away. This means that usually by the time you have located the whales on the horizon they are already disappearing. Despite the limited sightings, we were pleased we had the opportunity to see one whale (and confirms that everything we have been hearing thus far has not been lies).

On the way back to the beach, Tito showed us this cave, which clearly has some religious significance
(Note: Tito did not speak any english so there was not much conversation that occurred during the 
whole excursion, and combined with the engine noise, I was not able to get an explanation).

More abandoned boats. This one clearly has been there for many years,
based on the extent of the graffiti. 

We returned to the island, grabbed some lunch and later in the afternoon we walked back down to the beach where the ferry had dropped us off. There is only one ferry on and off the island each day, run by the same company (Sea Las Perlas, which also runs whale watching expeditions). This limited availabilty means that it can be easy to predict the movements of the tourists: they are dropped off at 9AM and any who aren't staying the night are told to arrive back on the beach by 3PM to check in.

A.A and I bought some ice cream from the local shop and found a good place to innocently "stalk" the tourists as they started to gather, evaluating the potential opportunity for us to approach them at a later point.

Stalker Shot 1

Stalker Shot 2

From what we saw, the tourists have to wait in line for at least 15-30 minutes while everyone checks in and has their bags searched by the local police. Then they are told to walk down the beach a short ways while one of the local fishermen uses their smaller boats to bring them to the ferry which remains anchored about a mile off shore (the tide is going down around this time in the afternoon which means the big boat can't come close to shore). While we didn't feel comfortable going up to any tourists during this trip, we did get permission from the Sea Las Perlas employees who were doing the check-in to interview tourists waiting in line at a future date. So there may be hope there.... 

While we had had limited conversation with Tito due to my limited spanish speaking abilities, he did seem happy to respond to the few questions I did ask him, so we may try to interview him and some of the other fishermen who come over from the nearby island of Saboga to take tourists out on the water. 

We spent what was left of the afternoon on the beach. Sadly it started to rain (surprise) but I was able to get some nifty videos of lightning (don't worry - we weren't anywhere near the water). 

Today (Thursday) my advisor picked us up on his boat and we headed back into the Perlas to try again to look for whales. We did manage to see a few more (about 5-6 total), but they also disappeared very quickly before we would be able to do any behavioral or biopsy sampling. Keeping our fingers crossed the rest of them are on their way!! 

However the universe must have felt bad about our lack of cetacean interaction because on our way back to the mainland we did run across a pod of common dolphins who proceeded to bow ride for at least 20 minutes. We eventually had to resume our normal speed, but they didn't stop following us and switched to wake surfing for at least another 10 minutes before finally swimming away. 

A.A was able to get this great video of the dolphins playing in the boat's wake

While it was not as event-filled as we hoped, it was great to finally be out looking for whales (and actually finding some!) On Saturday I am scheduled to go out on an official whale watching trip (Sea Las Perlas again), so I will definitely report back on how that experience is! (Although I may be slightly dead as I was told I have to be at the boat by 6:45AM) ☠.....

Until then - Peace, Love and Dolphins