Dominica's Whale Watching - March 2, 2003

During second semester at Ross, a group of thirteen (including us) decided to take a Sunday afternoon off and go whale watching. We took a bus to Anchorage Hotel for a three and a half hour whale watching trip off the coast of Dominica. Anchorage Hotel is the "pioneer" of whale watching in Dominica, and we highly recommend them for your whale watching experience.

We boarded the Miser's Dream catamaran around 2:00 on a beautiful sunny day. The water and sky were the bluest they had been in a while. The crew uses sonar to locate the whales -- they lower the equipment into the water and listen for the clicking noises that the whales make to communicate with one another. The equipment could tell if the whales were within 5 miles of the boat, and within an hour or so, we saw our first whale. For the next couple hours, we were able to stay with a small community of sperm whales, watching them surface, swim around the boat, and hoping for the all important "tail' shot. Ian was able to get an amazing tail shot (the first picture below). The second picture below is of the head of one of the sperm whales peaking out of the water; the mountains of Dominica are in the background. The last two pictures are of the whales surfacing to the top - in the fourth picture you can see the spray from the blow hole.

     

The most famous sperm whale is Moby Dick, but the creatures we saw were neither scary nor dangerous. For a while, there was what appeared to be a mom and two baby sperm whales swimming around the boat -- the two babies were curiously checking us out and we kept circling the boat after them for a good picture opportunity. We only saw sperm whales on this trip, but the sonar picked up a humpback whale in the area. The area is also known for false killer whales and dolphins. The peak season for whale watching around Dominica is in the winter months, between November and March.

We returned to Anchorage around 5:30 and headed to Fort Young for dinner. Fort Young is by far the best hotel on the island, and probably the only hotel we would recommend to tourists on the island. We watched the sunset on the deck and then had a nice dinner before finally returning home. All in all, it was a beautiful, relaxing day and a trip we would definitely recommend.

Pictured below in the first row: Ian and Kelly; the entire Ross group on board (front: Dave, Kat, Matt, Natasha Ian and Sean, back: Darren, Marcie, Margaret, Robin, Lindsay, Vicki, and Kelly); Dave and Natasha; Kat and Matt; and Kelly sitting at the back of the boat, with Dominica in the background. Pictured below in the last row: A group perched on the front of the boat waiting for the perfect picture; a group sitting on the top deck of the boat looking out over the water; the catamaran that took us out on the trip; watching the sun set from Fort Young.

  

          

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