WITNESS: A whale of a time in the Indian Ocean

Typography
Ed Harris has been reporting for Reuters in East Africa since May 2004, filing from Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, and the Indian Ocean region. A British citizen, he has been sending text, photos, and video from Mauritius for 18 months. In the following story, he recounts a chance and very rare meeting with a pod of sperm whales just off the coast of Mauritius.

Ed Harris has been reporting for Reuters in East Africa since May 2004, filing from Kenya, Djibouti, Eritrea, and the Indian Ocean region. A British citizen, he has been sending

text, photos, and video from Mauritius for 18 months. In the following story, he recounts a chance and very rare meeting with a pod of sperm whales just off the coast of Mauritius.

By Ed Harris

PORT LOUIS (Reuters) - Massaging in factor 20 suncream as we sped out to sea to film the disappearing lives of Mauritian fishermen, I had no idea I was about to risk my own.

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Everything was going to plan, I was thinking, still sleepy from a three o'clock alarm. When, with dawn stretching yellow and red across the sky, my companion called out "Whales!" I thought: 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 meters away, I could see them. Maybe half a dozen of the animals lazing around on the surface, blowing out spray, gulping in air, including a 20-metre male slapping 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 usually followed by immediate calm. That wasn't happening now.

Enormous grey outlines were emerging vertically from the blue below, clicking as they came. We were in the middle of a pod of whales, mostly female. Now I could see their heads, a distinctive squareish shape.

They were sperm whales. The species made famous by Herman Melville's 19th-century tale of a man's insane obsession with one, Moby Dick.

Today, even in the internationally agreed whale sanctuary of the Indian Ocean, sperm whales are rarely seen because they tend 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 on the large male, still slapping his massive tail on the surface.

My God, I thought, what would happen if I got in the way of that? Would I be pushed down into the water, was there a slipstream, would I be concussed or break my bones?

The situation was evolving quickly.

I saw a calf heading directly towards me, its tail wiggling up and down in an almost comical fashion. For a whale it was small, but not for me. If this thing opens its mouth and keeps on coming towards me, I thought, I am going to be swallowed alive.

Sperm whales are not killers, but they do have finger-length teeth, wrestle with giant squid, and consume a ton 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 the depths sperm whales swim, sunlight has disappeared long ago, so they use sound.

Another calf in the pod seemed to have a placenta hanging from it. A female nudged it to the surface, as if teaching it how to breathe.

A large, mature male slid past us, close enough to fix us with its eye as we studied its peeling skin in different shades of grey and its green fluorescent mouth.

Not quite within arm's reach, the closeness made me gawp.

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We made it to the shoot, and saw more of the whales on our way back. We played them music as we went. Some even swam beside the boat, rolling their bodies upwards as if for a final look before disappearing into the blue.

But of the half dozen or so experts I subsequently spoke with, only one had swum with sperm whales: Hal Whitehead from Canada's Dalhousie University, who spent three years studying sperm whales in the Indian Ocean.

None recommended trying it, on the grounds of possible injury to the swimmer or disturbance to the whale.

The experts told me that if you want to spot sperm whales the best place to look is about 7,000 miles away in the Azores.

Also, that a male splashing its tail on the surface is most likely a signal to stay away.

(Editing by Sara Ledwith)