Dominica Sperm Whales, Day V November 29, 2019

Though Chris and Izzy had briefed us to expect to have one day without any sperm whales we continued to be delighted with encounters each of our six days going out to see them.  Before I get to some uw shots from Friday, here's some more surface photos.

There were cruise ships in port for four of our six days out on the Caribbean with sperm whales.  This impacted us by adding other boats full of people out whale watching.  There are only a handful of whales off Dominica and each whale is typically only briefly on the surface between 40 and 50 minute dives so this has a real impact on how many whales we get to swim with.  The other sad impact is that the cruise ships always want to come into port with the rising sun coming over Dominica's mountains so they spin donuts offshore to hit the exact time.  This has the unfortunate impact of increasing the numbers of whales they kill with collisions (the passengers never know of course).  Each sperm whale mom only has a calf about every six years so the species is very slow propagating.

Here's both a small whale watching charter and a "cattle boat" with about a hundred people off the cruise ship in port that has a passenger capacity of 3300.  These boats were only out on cruise ship days.

Here's a chart with interesting info on sperm whales.  There is a significant ongoing research program focused on the sperm whales of Dominica.  To learn more, go to:
http://www.thespermwhaleproject.org/about/#desc

Here's a view of part of Dominica while we're a couple of miles offshore looking for whales.

We're off the west side of Dominica, this is a view of the northern tip of the island.  To the north of Dominica is the island of Guadalupe, to the south, Martinique.  Dominica is considered the southern most of the Leeward Islands, Martinique the northern most of the Windward Islands.

As the prevailing ENE wind drives moisture up Dominica's mountains clouds form with a lot of rain, giving Dominica rain forests and waterfalls, I didn't get out to see them because we spent every day out looking for whales, which was great.  The clouds mostly broke up over the Caribbean giving us good sun for our natural light photography.

The south end of Dominica.

Here are some photos from our fifth day with the sperm whales off Dominica, to see more, please go to:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/MFGJtfCzBFyfLVR37

Russ shooting video as the whale comes my way.

     Closer!

    You can see she is turning slightly to the right so cleared me by about 8 ft.

    Here I zoomed in on her eye.  Sperm Whales have much smaller eyes than Humpbacks.  Sperm Whales use echo location to hunt and eat, it's too dark to see down where Giant Squids lurk.

    Another encounter with the same calm, cooperative whale.  She has the nickname "Can Opener" because of the white scar you can make out halfway back on here head, about 1/3 of the way back on her visible body in this picture, with sun shining on the scar just above the dark shadow and white outline of her mouth below.

    Barbs getting a close pass!

Here I've zoomed in on the photo to see the remora just under her folded pectoral fin.

                      You can see the remora further back underneath her here, too.

                         Russ in position for another encounter.

    My turn, you can see Can Opener's namesake scar clearly in this photo.

   As she cruises past me she goes past Barbs and Chris.

Another spectacular day with sperm whales, sadly, the next day would be our last outing with them for this trip.