By Ed Harris
Ed Harris has been reporting for Reuters in East Africasince May 2004, filing from Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, and theIndian Ocean region. A British citizen, he has been sendingtext, photos, and video from Mauritius for 18 months.
PORT LOUIS (Reuters) - Massaging in factor 20 suncream aswe sped out to sea to film the disappearing lives of Mauritianfishermen, I had no idea I was about to risk my own.
Everything was going to plan, I was thinking, still sleepyfrom a three o'clock alarm. When, with dawn stretching yellowand red across the sky, my companion called out "Whales!" Ithought: here comes another distant sighting I'm going to miss.How will I keep my equipment dry on this shoot?
Then perhaps 50 or 100 metres away, I could see them. Maybehalf a dozen of the animals lazing around on the surface,blowing out spray, gulping in air, including a 20-metre maleslapping his tail on the water.
My companion jumped in to join them.
I followed him.
READER, I FOLLOWED HIM
When I go diving here, the moment of entry is usuallyfollowed by immediate calm. That wasn't happening now.
Enormous grey outlines were emerging vertically from theblue below, clicking as they came. We were in the middle of apod of whales, mostly female. Now I could see their heads, adistinctive squareish shape.
They were sperm whales. The species made famous by HermanMelville's 19th-century tale of a man's insane obsession withone, Moby Dick.
Today, even in the internationally agreed whale sanctuaryof the Indian Ocean, sperm whales are rarely seen because theytend to stick to deeper waters.
The facemask was distorting my sense of space and distance,but these creatures were colossal. I kept a tiny, human eye onthe large male, still slapping his massive tail on the surface.
My God, I thought, what would happen if I got in the way ofthat? Would I be pushed down into the water, was there aslipstream, would I be concussed or break my bones?
The situation was evolving quickly.
I saw a calf heading directly towards me, its tail wigglingup and down in an almost comical fashion. For a whale it wassmall, but not for me. If this thing opens its mouth and keepson coming towards me, I thought, I am going to be swallowedalive.
Sperm whales are not killers, but they do havefinger-length teeth, wrestle with giant squid, and consume atonne of food per day. I was also wary of sharks.
At the last moment, the calf turned away. More clicking.Was that a mother warning the calf not to get too close? At thedepths sperm whales swim, sunlight has disappeared long ago, sothey use sound.
Another calf in the pod seemed to have a placenta hangingfrom it. A female nudged it to the surface, as if teaching ithow to breathe.
A large, mature male slid past us, close enough to fix uswith its eye as we studied its peeling skin in different shadesof grey and its green fluorescent mouth.
Not quite within arm's reach, the closeness made me gawp.
NOT RECOMMENDED
We made it to the shoot, and saw more of the whales on ourway back. We played them music as we went. Some even swambeside the boat, rolling their bodies upwards as if for a finallook before disappearing into the blue.
But of the half dozen or so experts I subsequently spokewith, only one had swum with sperm whales: Hal Whitehead fromCanada's Dalhousie University, who spent three years studyingsperm whales in the Indian Ocean.
None recommended trying it, on the grounds of possibleinjury to the swimmer or disturbance to the whale.
The experts told me that if you want to spot sperm whalesthe best place to look is about 7,000 miles (11,000 km) away inthe Azores.
Also, that a male splashing its tail on the surface is mostlikely a signal to stay away.
(Editing by Sara Ledwith)
