A whale story

Our family got very cosy seats on first floor of the ocean bound whale watching ship.
More than seventy other children wandered here and there on the swan like white spacious ship, Ocean Dreaming Whale Discovery. Most of the watchers were equipped with binoculars, still or movie cameras for the almost three-hour trip, up and down. The ship passed by the Sydney Opera House. It was proceeding towards the deep sea … swimming through the rolling waves of the Pacific Oceans.
Almost one and half hours pass. We haven't seen trace of any whale so far. However, we were watching well the video whale-play on the TV sets around us. It was giving us lessons about the life and living of the whale community, their breeding styles.
Leaving the glass-shield window we went out to the upper deck of the ship. The ping of the chilled winds almost froze me within a few minutes. I am always a cold-sensitive guy with my sinusitis elegance. It caught me tight just after my arrival in Sydney from Bangladesh. But many whale watchers on that open deck were seen putting on pullovers or covering putting on scarves around the shoulders.
All of a sudden, a teenaged girl cried out …'Look! That's the whale! All the people of the deck came to the western side and took position with the binoculars. The ship alarmingly tilted on its left. But no whale…nothing… it was only the drivelling of a small dolphin. My younger daughter Ajanta became disappointed and said: 'Even in our country's rivers we can see this kind of baby dolphin!'
From the deck of the ship now we see only the roundel…panoramic view of the ocean…up to the last end of the horizon. Don't know how many nautical miles we have crossed. The ship simply danced on the waves. Gradually, the bluish water of ocean looked a bit different. The rolling waves started taking our ship sometimes up - at thirty to forty feet height and instantly thrusting down below the water surface of the sea. Some of the brave watchers were facing sea sickness with unwanted vomiting symptoms. A few among the crew were ready with vomiting bags. They knew well those might be required by some travellers, like us.
At the end of the 145-minute journey we really saw a pair of whales on the right side of the deck. The pair came out of the sea, jumped in the air at a ninety degree angle, showed almost fifty per cent of the body and rolled back down to disappear in the sea. It's not an arranged show
…it's natural… amazing. All the watchers suddenly went to the eastern side of the deck and the ship tilted again on its right. After sometime, we saw a few more whales…on our right…left. And then came the peak hour. . . Hundreds of whales! It was not possible to see the whole body. But it's true, some of the whales were more than forty-fifty feet long, weighing approx. 79,000 lbs. Those were humpback whales different from others - like Orcas, Mink, Gray, Blue or Sperm. Whales are seen in the oceans in different parts of the world. Humpback whales migrate about 14,000 nautical miles a year. It's amazing that these gigantic creatures can produce.What is called a whale song that can be of 10-20 minutes duration.
The ship was running slowly so that there was no disturbing the gigantic heroes of nature. Some whales came so close to our ship… quite a hand shaking distance. The titanic creatures of nature did not do anything to us. They could have if they wished, said my elder daughter Antara. Possibly she remembered the Moby Dick film (released first in 1956… while I was a student of class six in Bogra Municipal High School, what was also called Bangla School. The school recently had a grand reunion at 167 years of age). In the Moby Dick film the angry eyed white whale faces the challenge of the undaunted hunter (Gregory Peck)… The whale toppled and broke the ship in a few moments. But here the whales were full merciful to us…were busy with their sophisticated movements on the wavy oceans. The watchers went mad zooming in…zooming back and pan their cameras. Some students of the Marine Mammal Research group were seen looking at the whales from a different angle from close quarters.
The majestic creatures became visible dived down to the deep ocean showing their gracious tails. Did the waving tails transmit any message? We can decipher their message. Possibly they tried to say the age of the gigantic creatures, of mammoth dinosaurs has passed.
Who can imagine now that the barren Sahara desert was a soothing green plain land in ancient times? Who can say, after thousands of years, the vast Pacific Ocean will not fall prey to environmental pollution? Where will the whale community play, waving their tails in the majestic spaces of the oceans

Arun Moitra loves travelling.
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