Big Love
Forget SeaWorld. If you really want to see whales, off the coast of the Dominican Republic you can dive right in.

By Caitlin Gibson
Sunday, March 30, 2008

WE'VE BEEN SITTING, PERFECTLY STILL AND COMPLETELY SILENT, FOR SEVERAL MINUTES. The sun heats the fabric of my black wetsuit until my skin itches, but I don't move. There are 12 passengers in the 20-foot boat. All of us are waiting for the signal, a nod from the captain at the wheel.

When it's time, I reach up and pull my mask down over my eyes and nose, folding my lips over the mouthpiece. As quietly as possible, I lower myself over the side of the boat and slip into the ocean. Our group moves together, swimming slowly in the same direction. At first, peeking below the surface and scanning the depths, I see nothing in the water. We swimmers glance at one another. Were we too slow? Did we take too long getting in?

Then the scout at the front of the group stops. I clear my snorkel and lower my mask into the water; finally, I see what we've been waiting for. Despite my poetic preconceptions about what this moment might entail, there is only one clear thought in my mind. One word, actually. That whale, the one twirling in lazy circles just below the surface 20 feet away, is big.

And that's just the calf. The playful, 15-foot-long, roughly six-ton humpback whale calf. Movement farther below catches my eye, and I glance down. Resting near the floor of the coral shelf is mama -- big, times three. A small plume of bubbles rises from her blowhole, scattering a handful of tiny fish gathered around her head. I watch the school twinkle as it darts back and forth, the minuscule silver bodies vanishing beneath one of the humpback's pectoral fins.

I slowly move closer to the mother whale. Above the huge, dark shape of her, I suddenly feel that I am trespassing -- eavesdropping on a moment that no human being was ever meant to witness, not this far out at sea, not 50 feet beneath the surface of the ocean.

Another small stream of bubbles rises from the mother humpback, and then she is moving toward the surface, her size all the more impressive as she draws closer. Mature humpbacks usually measure from 45 to 50 feet in length, weigh between 30 and 50 tons, and boast an impressive wingspan as well -- each pectoral fin is up to 15 feet long.

Exhilarated but also feeling a powerful urge to move away, I am abruptly reminded that a snorkel does not accommodate rapid breathing. While I focus on long, slow breaths, the calf takes one more puff of air at the surface and returns to its mother. The two move away slowly, distance dissolving the pale lines of their pectoral fins. They vanish like ghosts.

I surface into the glaring sunlight of late morning and paddle toward Nelson Riollano, captain of the boat that brought us here. Nelson plucks his mouthpiece from his lips and grins at me.

"Awesome, right?" he asks.

The ocean around us is dotted with the brightly colored fins and snorkels of nearby swimmers, who lift their heads one by one and blink in the sudden light. Our boat is waiting a short distance away, the crew onboard waving to us. The transition is jarring -- like waking abruptly from a deep sleep.

We swim back to the boat and pull ourselves aboard. Several swimmers gush excitedly about what they have just experienced; others, myself included, simply pull off our masks and fins in a quiet daze. A momentary hush falls over the group as we all turn to watch the two whales moving off in the distance.

THERE ARE 24 PASSENGERS ONBOARD THE NEKTON RORQUAL, an 8o-foot "liveaboard" vessel operated by Nekton Diving Cruises. Florida-based Aquatic Adventures contracts the Rorqual for week-long, $2,900 whale swimming expeditions to the northeast corner of the Silver Bank ocean sanctuary, roughly 85 miles north of the Dominican Republic. Tom Conlin, who owns and operates Aquatic Adventures, looks the part with his dark tan, silver hair and bright blue eyes. He cut off a trademark ponytail just a year ago because, as he puts it, "I was turning 50 and thought I should grow up." He adds with a grin, "Didn't work."

The Rorqual may be home base, but most of our time is spent on one of the two 20-foot boats -- the crew calls them "tenders" -- that take us out in search of whales. The passengers, ranging from a teenager to a few folks in their 50s, are divided into two groups of 12, one per tender, and we're out on the water a lot: three to four hours in the morning, starting around 8 a.m., then a lunch break and back out again for the afternoon. Return, sleep, repeat.

Long days on the water offer plenty of time to get to know the other passengers, who represent a broad spectrum of philosophies when it comes to being in the water with whales. Hoi Leung, a crew member who piloted one of the tenders today, tells me that the group on his boat included the more spiritual members of the expedition. While my team lugged basic snorkel and camera gear onboard, the guests on Hoi's tender also packed four crystal "singing" bowls and wands, which were passed around and played during the outing to aid with meditation and help attract the whales.

"We had all four of them going at once," he says, his tone betraying more than a hint of sarcasm.

I ask him whether the bowls did, in fact, attract any whales.

Hoi raises his eyebrow and shrugs. "There were whales around when they played the bowls sometimes," he says. But, he points out, this is a humpback sanctuary; there are always whales around.

This fact is especially evident the following morning, when there seems to be a particular abundance of spouts and surface activity visible in the distance as we board Hoi's boat. Soon after we settle in and pull away from the Rorqual, Hoi spots a mother and a calf. The pair moves slowly, apparently entering a resting state, which is the best time to initiate an encounter. Resting whales usually rise, take several breaths, then return to their position below. Hoi watches as the mother and calf blow once, twice, three times and then arch their slick, gray backs and descend toward the ocean floor.

"Slip into the water," he says. "Swim about 30 feet off the port side and look down."

It's important to enter the water while the animals are resting near the floor of the coral shelf, and to do so with as little noise as possible -- whales can hear every scuff and bump against the hull of the tender, and making too much of a racket can dissuade them from sticking around.

Ten of us are in the water, and we turn back periodically to watch Hoi, who holds his arm extended in a line pointing toward the whales. We keep swimming, glancing over our shoulders until he signals for us to stop.

The water in the Silver Bank is a deep turquoise blue, the kind of hue usually confined to dyed fountains on miniature golf courses. Beneath the surface, softly wavering beams of sunlight reach down 50 or 60 feet, casting mottled patterns over the dark back of the mother whale. Tucked beneath one of her pectoral fins is her calf.

The snorkelers begin to spread out at the surface. I follow Nelson toward the front of the group, where we position ourselves at a perpendicular angle to the whales, hoping for a face-to-face encounter when they surface to breathe.

The calf is the first to stir; the mother humpback can stay down for up to 15 or 20 minutes, Tom says, while her six- to 10-week-old baby must breathe every three to six minutes. Nelson points down, and I watch as the nose of the calf tilts upward and the body slowly slides from beneath the mother's fin, turning up toward the surface. About eight feet away, the calf tilts so that I am caught in its dark-eyed, curious gaze. The calf moves closer. Then the young whale abruptly twists into a full-body roll, pale underside with long lines of ventral pleats exposed as if hoping for a belly rub. Just as I'm thinking how adorable this is, Nelson's arm tugs sharply against my waist and jerks me backward through the water.

By the time I've snapped out of my haze, I can see what happened: The fluke, or tail, of the spinning calf had swung through the water and passed close to where I had been drifting. I was so captivated by the gaze of the whale that I'd managed to forget about the fluke just 10 feet behind.

I lift my head out of the water to clear my snorkel and thank Nelson for the rescue, but he's still underwater beside me, treading quietly in place. He surfaces after a moment and taps my shoulder. "Put your head under, and hold your breath," he says. "You can hear a singer. He's far away, but you can hear it."

I can barely discern the whale song above the gurgling quiet beneath the surface. A faint, high-pitched, melodic moan, it falls, then rises again in a clear, lyrical arc. I wish the vocalist would come closer, remembering what Hoi said earlier about feeling the vibrations of a singing whale in close proximity: "If you're in the water with a singing animal, you can feel it everywhere, humming in every pocket of air in your body."

WHALE WATCHING IS A COMPARATIVELY RECENT DEVELOPMENT in what is otherwise a long and violent history between mankind and whales. The explosion of the American whaling industry happened in New England in the 19th century, primarily targeting sperm whales for the valuable spermaceti oil found in their large heads. Herman Melville's Moby Dick, published in 1851, didn't do these animals any favors in the public eye; Melville's whale was a relentless, vengeful beast inspired by an actual sperm whale who is believed to have deliberately sunk the Nantucket whaleship Essex.

Humpbacks, in particular, didn't suffer as severely when whaling became highly profitable, in part because they benefited from an unusual characteristic: Unlike most whales, humpbacks sink when they die, making it difficult for whalers to retrieve their bodies. However, with the arrival of modern whaling practices in the 20th century -- such as explosive harpoons and the ability to inflate a whale carcass with compressed air -- humpbacks became endangered, receiving official protection in 1963 after more than 200,000 had been slaughtered.

The relationship between man and whale evolved significantly between the era of Moby Dick and Hollywood's "Free Willy" in 1993. The "Save the Whales" environmental movement of the 1970s, characterized by the iconic image of Greenpeace protesters in inflatable boats confronting whaling ships, marked a profound shift in the cultural perception of whales. Bumper stickers, posters, T-shirts -- the public at large united in response to evidence of rapidly dwindling whale populations. The movement was ultimately successful, and a moratorium on commercial whaling was established by the International Whaling Commission in 1986.

Humpbacks, poster children of the "Save the Whales" movement, gradually began to attract the attention of the tourist industry, and activities such as land or boat-based whale watching and the more uncommon expeditions offering in-water encounters with the animals have become increasingly popular over the past 25 years. There are two places in the world where visitors are permitted to swim with humpback whales: the Kingdom of Tonga (in the South Pacific) and the Dominican Republic (less than four hours by air from Newark).

Swimming with whales is controversial, particularly among naturalists and marine biologists who believe that a human presence could disturb mating, feeding or nursing patterns. Several countries, including the United States and Mexico, have laws strictly prohibiting contact with whales beyond boat-based whale watching. But proponents of whale-swimming expeditions counter that the carefully monitored interaction with whales during "soft-in-water" encounters -- basically, passive snorkeling at the surface of the ocean -- doesn't pose a threat to the animals.

"I don't think that there's anything we can do -- I don't mean mankind as a whole, but just what we're doing here -- that disrupts them enough to make them not do what they're here to do," Tom argues. "It's obvious when a whale doesn't want to be around you, and when it doesn't want to be around you, there's nothing you can do to stay close to it."

AT THE HEIGHT OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC humpback whales' breeding and calving season, the quiet waters of the 200-square-mile Silver Bank sanctuary become "Club Med for humpbacks," as Tom likes to call it. Rowdy groups of males engage in particularly spectacular surface displays -- fin-slapping, breaching, high-speed races -- as they compete for the opportunity to mate. Roughly 5,000 to 7,000 humpbacks cycle through the sanctuary from December to mid-April, when the whales head north along the East Coast of the United States to feed in colder waters.

It's difficult to fully appreciate those numbers until witnessed firsthand. The morning we arrived, as a group of us stood on the sun deck admiring numerous spouts in the distance -- not to mention the mother and calf lolling at the surface just 50 feet to starboard -- it became clear that saying, "Hey, there's a whale!" around here is comparable to pointing out squirrels in Central Park.

Each sighting only raised our excitement, but before we could jump in, the crew took time to carefully review the various signals and safety procedures we'd need to follow in the water. Danger to the swimmers is another concern about encouraging close interaction between whales and humans; while there are clear precautions one can take to help ensure a safe encounter, being in the open ocean entails unpredictability. This was made clear by the liability release required for the trip, underscoring the risks involved -- including heart attack, panic attack, hyper-ventilation, animal attack or bite, plant or "chemical envenomization" -- in other words, the many ways that swimming in the ocean can kill you.

A few weeks before my trip, a handful of friends and colleagues e-mailed me a recent ABC News story about three snorkelers in the Dominican Republic who were injured by a mother humpback whale. I followed the link to the corresponding video, which showed a mother and calf looming closer, closer to the wobbling camera lens, and then, snap -- that's the mother's fluke breaking a snorkeler's leg.

But look again, says Tom, when he shows us the video of the incident on the Rorqual's big-screen TV. He points out that the snorkelers -- who were not part of an Aquatic Adventures expedition -- were far too close to the calf. (The snorkelers said in news stories that the current pushed them closer to the whales than they had intended to be.)

"Check this out," he says, clicking the tape frame by frame. "See how the mother's pec fin dips right below the swimmers?"

He's right. It seems that the mother, even in her attempt to move between her distressed calf and the swimmers, is making an effort to avoid colliding with the people in the water. Her long pectoral fin swoops down to avoid the dangling legs of the snorkelers. Despite the injuries, it doesn't appear to be an intentional attack.

Tom turns off the film and faces us. "It's their world," he says. "Respect that."

DAY FOUR, WE'RE OUT ON THE TENDER AGAIN -- but instead of our usual, meandering pace, the boat whips over the crests of swells. Tom and Nelson's voices shout over the roar of the engine.

"Surfacing, two o'clock!"

"Four and six o'clock -- here they come!"

We've found one of the rowdy groups, a gathering of males all vying for the escort position beside a female whale. She's managed to attract the attention of seven males, all racing one another at a speed that Tom estimates is about 15 knots -- about 17 mph, which feels much faster on the ocean than it does on the highway.

After several minutes of frenetic surface activity -- lunge-breaching, fins and tails slapping the water -- the whales go down again. Tom slows the tender. Everyone crowds to the sides of the boat, watching for any sign of movement.

About 20 feet off the port side, a 13-foot strip of water turns pale over the white skin of a rising pectoral fin. The surface bubbles. Then a spout, the loud, hard exhale of a whale on the move. We're off, moving quickly back toward the action, whales plowing to the surface on all sides of the boat.

Entering the water with a rowdy group is forbidden -- for one thing, the whales are moving so fast that they'd be gone before we could stop to pull on our masks -- but it's also far too dangerous. Rowdy groups can turn violent, even bloody, with males colliding in the water and breaching on top of one another. Following the Club Med metaphor, what we're witnessing is basically a bar brawl over who gets the hot chick's phone number.

And like a bar brawl, it eventually disperses. One or two males can't keep up. Others grow discouraged and drift away. Their departure is marked by flukeprints -- broad, flat circles that rise to the surface after a whale pumps its tail underwater. The flukeprints hold their shape among the swells and serve as markers to track how fast a whale is traveling, and in what direction. As the group disperses, we turn our attention back to the horizon, ready to find whales that are safer for an audience of snorkelers. The tender putters over the crests of small waves, and we scan the surface of the ocean for spouts, fins, flukes, any sign that might invite us back to the world beneath our boat.

ON THE NIGHT OF OUR LAST FULL DAY on the Silver Bank, I stand on the sun deck and watch a mother and calf circle the boat slowly, moonlight running in white ribbons down the length of their backs. I couldn't begin to count the number of whales I've seen out here over the week, but somehow I still feel compelled to watch them for as long as I can, until an undeniable need for rest sends me reluctantly downstairs.

In my cabin I can still hear the whales breathing, a sound like the sharp exhalation of a horse, only bigger, wetter. The first few times they blow, I sit up quickly and pull the curtain back to see, but the ocean is dark. I lie back down. They blow again. This time I don't move, and quickly drift asleep.

OUR FINAL HALF-DAY ON THE SILVER BANK turns out to be a bust; turbulent weather closer to shore results in rising swells, and we cut the day short to avoid a potentially unpleasant return voyage. In dry wetsuits, we unload the tender and get ready for the nine-hour ride back to the Dominican Republic. Onboard the Rorqual, the passengers scatter, gathering in the dining area to play board games or wandering to the top deck to bask in the dangerously intense Caribbean sun. For a while, I sit with a small group of guests gathered near the windows, watching a pair of dolphins accompany our departure.

Halfway back to the marina in Puerto Plata, I can already feel the gap start to close between where I am and where I'm going. The sea is no longer dotted with spouts.

Lamenting our return to the world of constant accessibility, someone behind me on the sun deck says wistfully, "My cellphone has been off this whole time."

Darkness falls while we're still offshore. I join the group of passengers and crew members gathering around the tables on the top deck. We watch our approach to Puerto Plata, the hazy blur of city lights creeping up over the horizon, dimming the stars and brightening the sea behind us.

Caitlin Gibson, legal administrator for The Post, is a writer who lives in Bethesda. She can be reached at gibsonc@washpost.com.