Dances with Whales

By Wayne Hall
Owner and operator of Ocean Vibes

As a child growing up on the island of Middle Caicos it was common myth that during the months of January thru March the Humpback whales weaned their young. This was symbolized by the adults ceremoniously tossing the young ones into the air in an attempt to teach them that they were now old enough to fend for themselves and should go their own way and start doing so.

When I was six years old I got my first look at this act and derived a different understanding of what was transpiring. First of all if these were the young ones and were being tossed into the air by the adults, then just how big and strong are these adults. Confused but too respectful of the village elders, I settled on their version of the story with my own interpretation of the event swirling in my head.

On my very first trip to the amazing walls off the North West Point of Provo during the winter months (January thru March), little did I know that I was about to experience my very first up-close encounter with the gentle giants. Out through Stubbs Cut we headed a bit further to the north and then set a course for the North West Point of the island with its white walls of water lining the horizon, as the powerful waves of the North Atlantic went head to head with the protector of our exquisite coastline, the Barrier Reef.

Right as we approached the Wheeland Cut area my breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage started disagreeing with me. As I started searching for my sea bands, which I should have been wearing all along, we were all diverted by the huge splash about 500 feet in front of the boat that seemed like an underwater volcano had just erupted. The spot from whence the splash came became a slick spot on the slightly choppy surface of the ocean and everyone in unison shouted "Whale" as another graceful leviathan catapulted itself three quarters of its body’s length above the surface of the deep and smacked back down again and disappeared from sight. Our captain slowed the boat down a bit and I, forgetting all about my breakfast problem, headed up to the bow of the boat and then climbed up to the fly bridge for a better view of the show. Off in the distance, we could see a spout of water being blown off as another Atlantic Humpback came to the surface, exhaled, took another breath, and then as if bidding us adieu disappeared below the surface, creating for those with cameras in hand a perfect shot of its enormous tail.

All was calm in the way of whales for another ten minutes, so we continued our journey to North West Point with everyone assembling their own version of the story with varying sizes and distance estimations away from the boat. But that’s another whale tale.

Totally enthralled by the whales arrogant display, I scoured the horizon to no avail the remainder of the journey out hoping to see more whales.

During the dives at North West Point there was an ever present haunting melody from somewhere off in the distance, so I kept looking off the wall in hopes of seeing one of these amazing creatures underwater. Needless to say I was haunted by the whales’ song and spent so much time looking off the wall that I forgot about all of the other marvelous marine life and just wanted to see a whale. Between dives we anchored at the beach at Malcolm Roads and whilst sitting up top saw a huge dark figure come in over the wall and started heading towards the beach. Some of the divers laying out on the beach working on their tans decided that we were trying to get them back to the boat early and just said to pick them up when we were done. We pulled anchor and motored towards the shade and the captain with his years of experience got within a hundred feet of the creature and killed the engines. As we stealthily glided towards the whale, it surfaced for air and continued in our direction. Some of the brave divers with us donned snorkel gear and slipped into the water in an attempt to get close to the whale while others ran around the boat swearing because they couldn’t find their film. I just stayed on the bow because I had seen them swim and knew that there was no way that I could even begin to keep up with this gigantic being. With all the snorkelers splashing around on the surface the whale turned, swam under the boat and quietly slipped over the wall and into the abyss leaving the happy snorkelers cheering. The second dive and the ride back was uneventful except for the whales song that continued dive after dive after dive.

There were similar encounters for the remainder of the whale season but the closest came a year later on a trip to the Wild, Wild, West Caicos.

West Caicos, a remote island formerly inhabited by Mormons at the turn of the century, sits perched at the South West edge of the Caicos banks and boasts one of the most spectacular walls and reef systems this side of the world. Today was to be the day to etch it in my mind for eternity.

Our first dive of the day was at a site called Yankee town (a point on the wall parallel to ruins of a town so named by the Mormons). En route to the site we had seen a pod of wild dolphins as well as a few perfect breaches by random whales that didn’t care to be disturbed by boats, divers and the like. We respected what we decided were their wishes according to their behavior and continued to the site. During the dive brief we were interrupted at least three times by whales breaching and splashing around nearby but our plan was to get in quick and hopefully see them up close as they cruised the edge of the wall as up until that time no one here had seen a whale on a dive. We descended to the sandy floor below and once all divers were on the bottom headed for the edge of the drop off in search of Mr. Big with me as the guide.

There were a few people in the group who looked like they were not physically able to swim after a whale but since then I don’t judge a book by the cover to this day. We meandered along the wall swimming out into the blue and back in to the shallows the entire dive and I noticed half way through the dive that something was different, the song was different from last year’s and as we got deeper the song faded and when we came back to the shallows it got louder.

I had heard about narcosis but we were only at 45’ on top of the wall. When we got back to the boat I gave the up signal and table divers proceeded to doing their safety stops whilst computer divers wandered over the bottom reveling in the freedom the extra ten minutes of bottom time afforded them. As I sat hovering at 15’ below the boat I saw in the distance what looked like two pieces of driftwood at about thirty feet and realized that the whales song was the loudest I’d ever heard. I looked at Steve who was my buddy for the week and on his last dive of the week, and without saying a word we turned simultaneously and swam in the direction of the planks.

To our utter amazement the two planks were the pectoral fins of a large female humpback, and right behind her was a baby whale. By the time we got to where they were, we were both exhausted and I had to push Steve’s regulator back into his mouth as we watched the two surface for air and then head back to the blue. We hovered awestruck for a moment reliving the moment before attempting to swim after them but it was too late. They were gone. We gave each other high fives and then turned to go back to the boat and realized that everyone else was right behind us and witnessed the whole thing. Some people were even swimming on the surface in full scuba.


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