Karma – A small word with a huge impact on our lives.
All my adult life, I have felt an attachment to those majestic creatures of the sea called whales. To me, they seem more “civilized” than a few people I’ve met! Not the least of which is the patience they’ve shown towards humans over the course of written history. During the whale days of yore, it’s amazing that more of them didn’t rush headlong and crash into the chase boats to disrupt the sailors who were sharpening their harpoons and preparing to slaughter numerous fellow whales.
My English ancestors, three brothers from Northumberland, landed in Massachusetts in 1630, just ten years after the initial group of Pilgrims scrambled onto Plymouth Rock. Over the next few decades, my branch of the family tree migrated to Connecticut and settled in towns along the north shore of Long Island Sound. One of these villages, called Fishtown, was located on the west side of the famous Mystic River. It was renamed Noank in 1840 for reasons I don’t know, although their cemetery is still called Fishtown Cemetery and it contains many of my ancestors. Just across the river was another village of seafarers called Mystic Seaport, which now houses one of the best maritime museums in the United States. For many centuries, people along the seacoast of New England made their living from the ocean – whether fishing, commerce trading or whaling. Many of my forefathers were whalers, which is where the karmic part comes in.
Whaling was an exceptionally dangerous business – both physically and economically. For those who chose this profession, injury and death were commonplace on the multi-month ocean voyages. Due to raging storms often encountered in whaling areas, many vessels and crews were lost at sea. Few individuals got rich and most of those were owners and agents, not the brave men who battled the elements in small boats.
So, why did they do it? Before the advent of gas and electric energy sources, oil from whale blubber was highly prized for house and street lighting as well as making high quality soap. Baleen was commonly used for fishing poles, buggy whips and women’s corset stays. Whales died by the hundreds each year to provide everyday conveniences for American life in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Much of my family’s history during this period involved interactions with whales.
Hence, for that reason, I have always wanted to meet a whale, eyeball-to-eyeball. My fascination (obsession?) has led me to many places in the world, from New Zealand to the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii to Mexico, and Maine to Alaska. Each time, my wife and I saw some interesting sights, but none really met the “bucket list” experience I was seeking.
Two years ago, a friend of my brother-in-law informed us about a scuba diving boat in the Caribbean that gave her an opportunity to swim with whales. Three small boat operators have permits that allow guests to get into the water and snorkel with humpback whales in the Silver Bank area of the Dominican Republic for three months every year. This is a small, shallow area with a unique formation of coral heads that provides protection from the pounding winter seas for mother whales and their calves. It is now a sanctuary where all North Atlantic humpback whales are protected from hunting. Less than 500 people can be accommodated each year since the dive boats only carry 16 to 20 guests per week-long trip. Though the waiting list was more than a year long, we signed up immediately with that same dive boat operator, Aggressor Fleet.
In mid-March of this year, we flew to the Dominican Republic and boarded our boat, the M/V Turks & Caicos Aggressor II, at Puerto Plata. We sailed in the evening and woke up the next morning as the boat was being moored to a buoy in the Silver Bank. We immediately saw several whales spouting at various distances around us. After breakfast, we boarded two small Zodiak chase boats and, armed with digital cameras instead of harpoons, we zoomed off to find some friendly whales.
Within an hour we found a mother and her calf resting on the bottom in 20 feet of water. Several of us, following a prescribed procedure, carefully entered the water and slowly approached their resting area. Within two minutes, the 15-foot calf nuzzled it’s mother as if to say “ma, can I go play with those silly-looking creatures” and swam up to greet us. For ten minutes, it did loops, swirls and head stands in front of us, hamming for the cameras. After completing each gymnastic move, it returned to mom as if to gain approval. Finally, the 40-foot long mother glided slowly up to our group and looked at each one of us from only an arm’s length away. Even though she was as big as a large truck, with powerful fins and a tail that could smash us into eternity in a second, she was as gentle and calm as any “wild creature” could ever be. After satisfying herself that we were no threat to her calf, she surfaced, breathed in new air, and returned to her resting position on the seafloor. The calf, of course, was now really excited to have his playmates “approved” by mom and its antics continued unabated for more than half an hour.
And there it was – just one hour in the water, and my lifelong bucket list desire had been fulfilled!
So it went for five more days. There were lots of whales spouting, spy-hopping, breaching, singing, and otherwise showing off for the other whales (as well as us humans) in their winter-time rest and recreation area. We even saw a few street brawls, as a few rowdy males vied to win the right to mate with a fertile female, slapping each other with pectoral fins or smashing one another with a tail smack to the head.
To those people who would say “well, I can see all this in an Imax theater,” let me say it’s not the same experience at all. For instance, we encountered a singing whale and swam with him for over an hour. When you are in the water with a loud sound source, it does not enter your “hearing” consciousness via the ears but via the entire body. In this case, the sound waves activated every cavity in our body so it feels like being inside a giant speaker – we became “one” with the whale’s song.
Even more so, I’m pretty sure that mother whale not only looked into my eyes but into my soul. When a 40-foot long, 45-ton creature swims towards you in the water, there’s a natural instinct to flee – fast! But I felt a great sense of calmness and peace that allowed me to stay where I was and let the whale swim right up to me and stop. I knew she meant no harm. It’s one of those experiences that defies explanation, but you know it when it happens! I wanted to apologize for the harm my ancestors had done to hers, but it’s very difficult to speak with a snorkel in one’s mouth. At the end of the encounter, however, I think she got the message anyway.
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