Celebrating Avurudu with Whales

Being a naturalist I have a firm believe that new opportunities will boost your knowledge and experience in this field. Having an opportunity to play the role of a naturalist for the Sri Lanka’s latest aquatic adventure tours organized by the Walkers Tours in collaboration with Ceylon fishery harbours corporation, was privileged to gain this new experience of observing the giant whales and the dolphins roaming in our tropical waters. Surely, this allowed me to read a lot about whales, their migration patterns, and surface characteristics on how to identify them and lot more.



On 11th of April another tour of whales watching with 12 guests came under my purview, which we started sailing around 07.20, am from Mirissa harhour with gloomy weather conditions. Continued roaming around Matara in search of whales till 09.30, am but no sign of a whale other than the few bottlenose dolphins we observed. Everybody seemed disappointed but I had a strong feeling that we will be successful before we end the journey. In fact Mr. Phil Sheldrake, a Project Manager from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds of United Kingdom with his two daughters seemed to be very anxious of seeing a whale. Suddenly our sailor, Thuduwage saw a blow of a blue whale and we were able observe our first blue whale with a distance of about 100 meters before it raised the fluke and take a deep dive. Quenching the thirst of seeing whales eight blue whales came in our presence allowing us to observe all the surface characteristics including few exhales, dorsal fin before raised their flukes and take a deep dive. Everybody of the boat was thrilled with this lifetime aquatic adventure experience they cumulated before we end our journey around 11.15 am to the Mirissa harbour.




The same journey but with different set of clients on 12th April almost on the same time but with better sunny weather conditions. Almost the repeated story of the previous day, roamed till 10.00 am in search of whales up to Dondra point but no sign of a whale other than a herd of bottlenose dolphins and some spinner dolphins. Repeating the previous day’s story a blue whale came in our presence but with quite a distance without leaving much space for us to observe. Without satisfying the observation of the first whale we were looking forward to see another one or two whales before we start proceeding to the destination again a blue whale came in our presence to observe all the surface characteristics with a safe distance before it raise the fluke and take the deep dive as usual. Before we end up the journey around 11.45 we spotted another blue whale and a humpback whale. To mention, the return journey to the harbour was not smooth as previous day due to the rough sea conditions. Everybody were compelled to have a nice bath with sea water because of the sea spray blowing through the boat due to heavy waves kissing in front of the boat.