Pan-Pacific Adventure part 2: small boats in big seas!

Written by Adam

Tuesday, 09 March 2010

Taking the Sette across the Central Pacific was a fun trip, but the real adventure began once we arrived in Guam. Allan, Mark, and I bid farewell to the rest of our colleagues and traded our 224’ ship for a 19’ Boston Whaler. The mission was the same; find, photograph, and biopsy cetaceans in order to get a feeling for what was out there. Our main goal was to confirm or deny that the Marianas were a humpback whale breeding ground, but in order to do that we had to be there during the windiest time of the year. This was going to be challenging. The general plan was to launch out of Agat harbor at dawn and try and find the spinner dolphins that hung around the shallows before the dolphin-watching boats showed up. We’d work them for a while, then sneak out into deeper water using the shoreline as protection, then turn offshore and ride the weather down until we found something or couldn’t handle the pounding anymore. At that point we’d come back up the coastline hugging the shore in hopes of finding more spinners. Sounds good, right? Amazingly, this plan worked quite well. Just about every morning we had groups of 20-80 spinners all to ourselves for about an hour. These guys are pretty fun to work with. Just as our luck with spinners was nearly constant, so was our luck with bad conditions as we headed offshore. Constant 20+kt winds made for nearly impossible viewing conditions and it was often hard to stay standing up, let alone see anything. We did notice that there were quite a few white terns fluttering about, and upon closer inspection we discovered that just about every one we saw was holding station above a mahi mahi or ono. This prompted some exploratory trolling and subsequent catching of fish, which both improved our diet and morale. Who wants some sashimi? This circuit became our daily routine for the majority of our time on Guam. We did spend a couple of days on slightly larger boats to cover more area, but the farther offshore and north we got, the worse the conditions were. Even though the swell and wind was making our jobs extra challenging, we were able to see some of the local breaks close up. According to our captain, this wave is one of the best on Guam. The winds were right but the swell direction wasn’t perfect, but it looked pretty good to me. Every time I go out in rough weather I wonder how many whales and dolphins I am missing. I often imagine the whales and dolphins peeking out behind the waves as we go by, laughing at our futile efforts to find them. This would be a whales’ eye view of our boat as we looked for them. Sometimes our target species make it easy and find us instead of waiting for us to find them. During one particularly nasty day we had a group of spotted dolphins come over and check us out. We didn’t hold their interest for very long but it was nice to see something other than spinners and finally get a sighting offshore. After about ten days of spinners and that token spotter sighting we were getting a bit frustrated, but on our last day the weather gods took pity on us and gave us relatively calm weather, which allowed us to spot a group of 10 sperm whales! These leviathans were a welcome treat and we were able to obtain ID photographs and a few biopsy samples from the group. Notice the tell tale 45 degree blow that facilitates identifying sperm whales at a distance. Sperm whales aren’t the only deep divers out there. Here’s a nuclear submarine trying to blend in. In certain areas the deep water comes quite close to shore. These whales are barely a kilometer from the beach but they are in over 1000 feet of water. I don’t often get a chance to photograph sperm whales underwater. Look closely and you can find eight of them. After long days of getting beaten up in the little Boston Whaler there would have been nothing better than a nice massage to loosen up, but after checking out a few of the local massage places we decided it was probably safer to avoid them. A better option for some relaxing was attending the Wednesday night Chamorro market, where the street meat was a bit safer. After our effort on Guam we moved north to the island of Saipan. Unlike the concrete jungle of Guam, Saipan still has the feel of a classic tropical paradise. Saipan was the site of one of the bloodiest battles of World War Two, and there are still remnants of the battles nearly everywhere you look. Our first evening was spent at a nice little beach bar on a Marine landing zone known as Red Beach. Those two hulks out in the distance are M4A3 Sherman tanks left over from the U.S. landings, and we couldn’t resist snorkeling out to look at them. Our mission on Saipan was the same as on Guam: find, identify, photograph, and biopsy cetaceans. Once again, it sounds a lot simpler than it is, but up here the weather was initially a bit easier on us. We were able to circumnavigate Saipan, including a trip up to Marpi Reef, which is ten nautical miles offshore, on our first day. As on Guam, our bread-and-butter species was the spinner dolphin. We enjoyed numerous spinner sightings during the first few days of good weather, but the forecast predicted a change for the worse about halfway through our stay. On the last day of predicted calm we once again lucked into a group of sperm whales and were able to obtain ID photographs and biopsy samples. While we were working the group of sperm whales the weather picked up to the point where it was impossible to work anymore, so we retreated back to the harbor to process our data and check the weather forecast. Unfortunately the forecast was predicting 30-knot winds for the last few days of our scheduled time. Finding whales would be impossible and even getting out beyond the reef was unsafe, so we spent our last days enjoying some of the best snorkeling in the western Pacific and filling our bellies with more excellent street cuisine. The Pan-Pacific Adventure was supposed to have a part 3 in Japan, but it didn’t happen due to airline issues so I flew back to North America and now, 48 hours after leaving Saipan, I’m back in British Columbia. Stay tuned for a report from the Cold Smoke Foto Shootout!