Blue Whales & Stilt Fishing
Whale Watching 11th February 2009-02-12
Not only the largest land mammal, the Elephant, Sri Lanka having but also the largest mammal, in fact the largest known creature ever on this planet is here and swims 8 miles off the south coast of Sri Lanka; The Blue Whale.
Just when you think you have seen it all, Sri Lanka surprises you again!
Over the last 18 months or so I have been reading articles about whale watching in Sri Lanka, it has been known since the second world war that whales & especially Blue Whales seasonally inhabit the waters around the island with frequent sighting around Trincomalee in the north east but it was not known that the south offers close encounters of the Baleen kind.
A day of magnificent sightings, only 1 hour out & we saw our first Blue, or Pygmy Blue? How something so huge can have a title of Pygmy astounds me, a sub species of the blue whale that inhabits the Indian ocean; first we saw a pair of turtles mating in the vast Indian Ocean, who would have thought that a boatload of humans are going to disturb your lustful morning! Sorry.
4 times in 2 hours we spotted the tell-tale ‘blow’ of the whale, not sure if we saw the same whale 4 times or a number of different whales? You really won’t care. 4 times we drew up a respectful distance to watch the, beautiful, massive, mammal gracefully swim along side or in front of us ‘blowing’ jets of water high into the air before arching it’s back, heading to the depths bringing it’s tail up into the air like a huge triangular kite in front of us, then slipping into the ocean with just a hint of disturbance at the Ocean surface.
The trip was organised by Mirissa Water Sports; www.mirissawatersports.com I will be contacting them to arrange further visits that they can be assured of.