Our Little Whales

By Karen Erens

 

Ti whale an nou.

 

The Caribbean Cetacean Society uses this mix of English and Creole, meaning “our little whales,” to promote their cetacean expeditions around the Caribbean islands.

 

I would like to introduce the Caribbean Cetacean Society, CCS. It is a non-profit, non-governmental NGO founded and led by Caribbean people. It aims to conserve cetaceans in the Caribbean. Cetaceans are marine mammals such as whales, dolphins, or porpoises.

 

The objectives of CCS are:

• To promote cooperation between the islands.
• To set up research programs and collect missing data.
• To use this data to support the development of conservation measures adapted and effective with each territory.
• To raise awareness of the richness and fragility of cetaceans.

 

This year, 2023, is the first time that the ABC islands (Aruba-Bonaire-Curaçao) were included in the scientific whale expeditions, which were sponsored by WWF (World Wildlife Fund). The schedule of the expedition was to sail around each of the ABC islands for six days; those six days were split up in two, so they were looking for volunteers to help with the observations and data collection during a three-day expedition.

 

Jean-Marc and I sent in our application for the Curaçao expedition, and we were fortunate to be accepted. So, on Friday, the 20th of October 2023, we, a group of five volunteers, were welcomed in the early morning on board “Exocet,” a 45-foot catamaran rented by CCS and anchored in Spanish Waters, Curaçao.

 

After the boat briefing by skipper Coco, we received a scientific briefing on the trip’s goals and what was expected from us volunteers. Next, Jeff, one of the CCS founders and the NGO’s president, and Stacey, regional coordinator of CCS for the Dutch islands and WWF-NL Dutch Caribbean Program Advisor divided the group into three teams of two people and explained how to perform the watch for dolphins and whales and which data would be essential to capture on the tablet. After the briefing, we left in the direction of Klein Curaçao.

 

Jean-Marc and I were on the first watch, which meant 2 hours on the flybridge, each scanning the sea at one side of the boat for dolphins, whales, and birds. In the meantime, the data team on watch gathered all data from our sightings and information on other ships in the surrounding area, the weather, birds flying around the boat, and hopefully dolphins or whales.

The data team was also responsible for managing the data from the hydrophone. The hydrophone is towed behind the boat, all day long, to pick up all kinds of sounds in the water like the engines of boats, but we were hoping to pick up the whistle sounds of a dolphin or clicks from sperm whales.

 

The day passed quickly doing those two-hour watches; unfortunately, we were not lucky. Besides some bird sightings of brown boobies and red-footed boobies, we were only staring into the white caps of the surrounding waves or listening to the sound of the speed of the boat in the hydrophone, not seeing or hearing anything interesting. Just before sunset, we picked up a mooring at Klein Curaçao to spend the night in the shelter of the small uninhabited island about ten miles out of the coast of Curaçao.

 

On the second day, we passed Curaçao to the north, but again, no luck. Besides some birds and a big thunderstorm hitting us at sea with a lot of rain, we did not see anything. At least the skipper was happy as we could fill the water tanks with some extra rainwater. The rest of the crew and we, the volunteers, were disappointed. Later in the second day, the conditions were good, with no winds and light seas, great for watching and spotting dolphins and whales, so not seeing anything was not motivating. We spent the night at the anchorage of Santa Cruz.

 

Day three started very promising, with a wake-up call from a small group of dolphins in the early morning. We did not even leave the anchorage as the dolphins were swimming around the boat, probably hunting for their breakfast fish, while we were trying to take some good pictures of their dorsal fins, which is their fingerprint.

 

The goal of this expedition is to identify as many dolphins as possible to study if the families are migrating to nearby islands like Aruba or Bonaire or if they are a local family living in the waters of Curaçao. After 30 minutes of enjoying the company of dolphins, we left the group and headed out to sea.

 

The plan, already the last day of our expedition, was to go north again and try our luck. Jeff wanted to find a spot where the sea bottom drops to 2000 metres, which might attract sperm whales.

They can dive down for up to 50 minutes and hunt for giant squids at those depths, which is amazing if you think about it. We, humans, are poor divers compared with sperm whales; they can shut down their alveoli and small air sacs in their lungs, which prevent gas exchange and reduce the risk of nitrogen absorption, which might cause decompression illness and, of course, this conserves oxygen. On top of that, sperm whales have evolved to access oxygen from their blood and muscles, which helps them make those extended deep dives to hunt for giant squids.

 

Jean-Marc and I were the first team on watch on the flybridge. The sea was flat, there was no wind at all, and those were ideal conditions to spot some whales. Thirty minutes before the end of our watch, we heard some excitement in the cockpit; the “data” team heard sperm whale clicks on the hydrophone; the location of the clicks was in front of us but still far away. Okay, let’s try to spot them.

 

Just after the change of watch, a blow was spotted and then again and again. The skipper sped the boat up while changing the heading towards that spot. As we see the blow closer and closer, we can also see the giant head of the sperm whale floating at the surface of the water. According to the marine biologists on board, this one is a calf; it doesn’t join the adults to the extreme depths and waits until they finish their deep dives.

 

This “small” calf remained on the surface while we were approaching. The goal of this expedition is to take pictures to identify the whales. The fingerprint of a sperm whale is the tail or “fluke,” as the marine biologists call it. So, the skipper tries not to scare the calf away. That is why he approaches the calf from behind so it doesn’t feel threatened, and if it dives down, we are in the perfect position to take some “fluke” pictures. In the meantime, everybody is on deck, trying to find some other whales by determining the blow, always ready with the camera to take that “fingerprint” picture.

 

After a while, we see several other blows; there is a lot of excitement on board as the adults are surfacing. We always approached the whales very slowly from behind so as not to threaten them, and we succeeded several times in taking those identifying pictures. For me, the highlight of the sighting was the three adult sperm whales hanging side by side at the surface; our boat was in the perfect position behind them, and all of us were waiting with the cameras for them to fluke, but they had all the time in the world just chilling at the surface. Finally, our patience was rewarded, and we could take detailed pictures of the flukes as the three sperm whales dived down one by one.

 

After five hours of hanging around with the family of sperm whales, it was time to head back to the Spanish Water; as we were far at sea, it was still a lot of hours to sail back. Luckily, the sea was flat, and we enjoyed a beautiful sunset to finish the sailing day. Back at Spanish Water, we had a last debriefing together, evaluating the three days on this scientific expedition with the Caribbean Cetacean Society before we said goodbye and left with a hard disk full of whale pictures.

 

Jean-Marc and I had an amazing time onboard. We learned a lot about sperm whales, and in the future, on our own sailing yacht, Blowing Bubbles, we will always be on the lookout for whales to photograph for that identifying fluke shot!

 

If you want to learn more about the Caribbean Cetacean Society, visit their website or follow them on social media:  www.ccs-ngo.com/

 

Check them out on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@caribbeancetaceansocietycc6243