I wanted to be a whale trainer so badly from the time I first saw marine mammals at MarineLand, all the way up to now - although now, having learned quite a bit more about these animals from being completely obsessed/captivated by them, I know that overall it would bother me. I've loved seeing these animals in marine life parks - but I've come to understand just how wrong it is to see these animals being exploited for human amusement. While I can admit there is a certain education factor is good, and maybe these parks allow many of us the opportunity to see animals that we might well never get a chance to see, I've come to believe that we shouldn't see them anywhere but where they belong - which is in their natural habitat.
Mind you I would watch these animals up close in a marine park - and I have done so. The thing is, they don't have to be doing tricks and performing. They could just sit motionless in the water - I'd still stand/sit there captivated, and I could sit there for hours. Years ago, I worked catering functions at Sea World in San Diego. Truth be told, the only reason I went to work at Sea World was because I wanted to be a whale trainer. I thought any way I could get my foot in the door...
In the Fall, some of the functions I worked ran until ten or eleven o'clock at night. I'd cut through the whale stadium on my way to the time clock/employee entrance. In the Fall, they would fly other whales back to San Diego from Ohio and Texas. That late at night, they would allow the whales full run of the stadium as a group. Although I wasn't supposed to do this, I'd stand up on the platform that an audience member would come up to during the show & they would have one of the whales pop up & stick its tongue on the person's cheek.
I'd stick my hand in the water and splash until the whales would swim over to me. I'd scratch their tongues & touch them. Some of them would spit mouthfuls of water at me. I didn't care. I always kept these cut through sessions short - but I could've easily stayed there all night experiencing these magnificent animals. That's as close as I ever got to them - and the more I've learned about them, the more it makes me sad that any animals like these are in places like that. These are animals that stay within the pods they're born in for their entire lives. They are animals that easily cover 100 miles in a single day, and here, no matter how large their enclosures may be, no matter how many times they're put into a larger enclosure...it could never be big enough for how these animals are supposed to live.
They're not supposed to be rounded up, captured and torn away from their family groups, the pods that they stay in their entire lives. Yet they have been, all for human profit, amusement and enjoyment. These are intelligent animals that form tight family bonds. They're not animals that should ever have to ponder a long flight to the West coast, being out of the water they live in for hours at a time, and then being put back into a chlorine heavy salt water tank where they can swim small circles in. Most of them don't live long lives in captivity, most of them live much longer lives in the wild, where they're supposed to be.
Last week, I went on a trip that I've longed to do for many years. Although there were a lot of things to take in and enjoy on this trip, at the top of the list was seeing these animals in their natural environment. There was no real guarantee that I'd be able to do that. Nonetheless, as I stood on the deck of the first boat we went out on in the hopes of seeing these whales, just looking out at the expanse of the Salish Sea and knowing that they're out there, they live in these waters, was an incredible feeling.
Also an incredibly feeling, and one that moved me to tears, was when the naturalist on our boat told us that we had whales at 10 o'clock off the bow. You're not allowed to approach these animals any closer than 200 yards. That's not close enough for my liking, but believe me, it's still quite a thrill looking through my camera and seeing these whales off in the distance, clicking off as many shots as my camera would allow. In this group of transient whales (these whales eat mammals - porpoises, Sea Lions, dolphins) there was a big male and some females and a younger whale.
What I didn't see, was exactly what these animals were eating - I never saw a spout from a porpoise, or an unfortunate seal. We did come up to a group of rocks making a tiny island where Seals and Sea Lions hauled up on, and the whales know this spot. At one point not far off of the bow, there were two Seal Lions in the water and the whales were facing them perhaps 100 yards or so, maybe less. Enough less that the whales could've easily closed the gap and made things very interesting for those of us on the boat. They didn't eat in front of us that day though.
All of my photos from that day out on the water, are distant. You can definitely tell that I was quite a ways off from the animals - but they're still photos I cherish. Burned into my memory is scanning the surface of the water in the hopes of getting another glance at this group of whales. You wouldn't see them for minutes at a time, then their dorsal fins and part of their bodies would appear as they surfaced to breathe within seconds of each other. They're here. This is where they belong. In a sea, a body of water so expansive that one might not ever see them again - then again, in a body of water that one might very well get a glimpse of them again in. Here. This is where you need to see them.
There were no breaches from any of these animals on that day. I snapped loads of photographs of them off in the distance. I saw these animals out there, on the Salish Sea - and even from 200 yards away, nowhere near close enough for my liking, this was amazing. Had these been the only photographs I'd gotten on this trip, I'd still be grateful for every shutter click. Beyond grateful for every glimpse of the dorsal fins and backs of these animals appearing about the surface of the water off in the distance. I'd return someday, hopefully - after this trip and on another one, one that my main objective of will be the same reason: to see these magnificent animals in their natural environment, and hopefully, to get some good photographs of them in the world the belong in.
Two days later, I'd go out on a different boat and see them again - and just before we would move on, I'd seen them again, hundreds of yards away...yet now, on the Salish Sea in a circle of 4 or 5 other boats on the water that were full of people hoping for the same thing that I longed for, now these whales were turning towards us and heading closer to the boat...see Closer To The Boat, Pt. 2
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