Can a blue whale be upstaged?

6th March

More blue whales today, as amazing, beautiful and humbling as yesterday's. As we sailed back from our morning with these giants, news came that ahead, around a group of small fishing boats, was a pod of spinner dolphins. It doesn’t seem possible that anything in the sea could upstage a blue whale but this morning I think the dolphins pulled it off. Let me set the scene: half a dozen puny fishing boats in a cloud of terns – whiskered, gull-billed, little and bridled – and two pomarine skuas floating nearby, waiting no doubt for a foolish tern to pass with a fish in its bill. All around the boats, under the maelstrom of terns were spinners, dozens and dozens and dozens of them, right at the water’s surface. They kept in tight groups of twenty or thirty, rolling over the water with their long beaks, their inky-dark backs and their sharp dorsal fins. Occasionally a dolphin, often a youngster, would leap from the sea and spin or cartwheel dramatically. All the while our crew whistled to them as this, they believe, attracts the dolphins’ attention. For minutes on end we watched astounded and delighted until, when it was clear the spectacle wasn’t stopping soon, we thanked the dolphins and sailed for home.

This afternoon we visited Galle, a port town with an imposing fort occupied and modified by successive colonial powers. Over the eighteenth century Dutch church flew an Indian swiftlet, in company with a house swift. On the ramparts were house sparrows, the first I have seen in Sri Lanka.

It’s late and I’m shattered. Time to climb slowly down from the dolphin high (is that what they call endolphins?) and sleep.

Quoting Roger Payne:

Whales have an important lesson to teach us. Whales have a large and complex brain but show no signs of threatening their own destruction. They haven’t reproduced themselves into oblivion, they haven’t destroyed the resources upon which they depend, they haven’t generated giant holes in the ozone, or increased the earth's temperature so that we might end up with the greenhouse effect. The lesson whales teach us is that you can have a brain of great complexity that doesn't result in the death of the planet.

Diane Ackerman

The Moon by Whale Light

 

New Sri Lankan beauties from today

	Mammals
37	Gray’s spinner dolphin	Stenella longirotris longirostris
	Birds
364	pomarine skua	Stercorarius pomarinus
365	little tern	Sterna albifrons
366	Indian swiftlet	Collocalia unicolor

2012 Totals

Mammals: 37

Birds: 366

Reptiles: 8

Amphibians: 3

Fish: 2

In the company of giants

There are creatures so magnificent that words and pictures cannot capture them, experiences so vivid they must be lived. This morning the creatures we saw were too magnificent and the experience too vivid, but try to express them in words I must. This morning we saw blue whales.

That the blue whales found in the Indian Ocean are the laughably named pygmy blue whale is taxonomically interesting (though their taxonomy is far from clear) but irrelevant. Smaller than the blue whales of high latitude seas they may be; magnificent they are no less for it.

We sailed from Mirissa port in a storm of terns: whiskered, gull-billed, common, great crested and, a little further offshore, exquisitely long-winged bridled terns. Not long after sailing our spotters called to the captain to guide him towards distant blows; but distant blows soon became not distant blows and we found ourselves in the company of pygmy blue whales. A tall, columnar blow, the ridge of the whale’s back and three seconds (always three seconds) after the blow the diminutive and diagnostic dorsal fin. After a dozen or more blows, a stronger curve to the back, a raised tail and perfect stillness on the ocean’s surface once more.

For two hours we watched a small group of these phenomenal animals, seeing three identifiable whales and perhaps a fourth. The one we saw most – five times – had a large notch cut from its already tiny dorsal fin. Another had a big pale splodge in its tail. And at least one other had no notch and no splodge. Each had whalesuckers attached to its tail or back: another extraordinary creature, on an extraordinary morning.

As we sailed elated home we passed through a feeding flock of whiskered terns, containing numerous smaller, perkier white-winged terns. Six species of tern in a morning. But when blessed with the company of pygmy blue whales, who’s counting?

Marine marvels from this morning

	Mammals
36	pygmy blue whale	Balaenoptera musculus indica
	Birds
349	common tern	Sterna hirundo
350	bridled tern	Sterna anaethetus
351	white-winged tern	Chlidonias leucopterus
352	Indian peafowl	Pavo cristatus
353	white-bellied sea-eagle	Haliaeetus leucogaster
	Fish
2	whalesucker	Remora australis

2012 Totals

Mammals: 36

Birds: 353

Reptiles: 7

Amphibians: 3

Fish: 2