Swimming with the Humpbacks in Tonga

 

“Stop being perverse.   It’s amazing.  It’s epic.  It’s out of control.  It never gets old.  Most people spend thousands to fly here and then spend more money to do it everyday for a week.  You’re already here, you didn’t even have to pay for the flight, the least you can do is go one time.”

It’s June, and we have been in Tonga’s northern group, Vava’u, for a week.  We arrived via sailboat.   We are sitting outside in a drizzle at a traditional Tongan feast, and a professional photographer is adamantly telling us we MUST swim with the humpback whales while in Tonga.  “I used to be a photographer for African safaris.  People pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to go on safari, and they do it to have an intimate, un-catered wild-life experience.  This is better than any of the safaris I was on.  You will get closer to these animals than any animal on a safari, and a humpback is one of the largest creatures in the world.  In the wild.  For 200 dollars.  Where else can you do that?”

Back in July, we did a humpback whale swim in Tonga.  And I’m going to tell you all about it.  About the whole thing, beginning to end.  Because when I signed up for it, purely on the good faith of that photographer (and a deep deep desire to continue having up-close encounters with creatures of the marine kind), I had no idea what to expect.  I’m sure you’ve all read about whale swims, the raves, the exclamation points.  The internet doesn’t lie (in this case anyway), the photographer didn’t lie: it is a truly one-of-a-kind experience, something that even the memory of gets my heart beating a year later.  And I hope to convey even an iota of that magic.  But I also have ulterior motives.  During my whale swim in Tonga, I couldn’t help but notice that it’s a little more complicated than just the blissful moments of face-to-face with a humpback whale.  The whole experience left me with some misgivings and some questions about the bigger picture surrounding the interaction I had.  Now, having done a whale swim and having seen all it entails, I have to wonder: what’s the experience like from the other side?  What effect does ecotourism have on the humpbacks it ecotours?

…..

Ok.  Fast forward two weeks from the Tongan feast and the photographer.  We (my boyfriend, the captain of our sailboat, and I) are at the dock at 7am with the five other “whale swimmers” on our tour.  The man who seems to run the company, a tall, strong Aussie with tattoos and a tight shirt, is benignantly smiling at the room in general.  There is young a woman almost-yelling at the receptionist (an older woman who looks like a life-long diver) in an unidentifiable Latin accent that, of course she didn’t show up yesterday, she was very sick, vomiting, shitting, and, no, she didn’t know about the 72 hour cancellation fee and, this is bullshit, she should get a refund.  “I was leaking all my food out all night.”  “We understand, ma’am, I am very sorry, but our policy is no refunds unless cancellations are made 3 days in advance.”  “I did not know these, you say it nowhere.”  (It’s written in red on every sign and pamphlet and its the third line on their website, also in red.)  I have to walk outside, away from her insistence.  Self-righteous people… yikes.

Usually, I’m not really the type to be here, doing something like this.  I cringe at paying money for something I know I can do myself, and do more to my own liking.  Feeling like a herded cat in an awkward group of tourists…. not high on my list of favorite feelings.  But here in Tonga, it is illegal to swim with the whales unless you are with a licensed boat.  Illegal like, they kick you out of the country if they catch you doing it.  And though it seems that it would be difficult to monitor all the waters of Tonga, there is in fact a large monitoring force: the licensed whale boats themselves, out all day, every day, except Sunday (nobody does anything on Sunday in Tonga, it’s a very Methodist/Catholic country).  And you can imagine why they would be interested in stopping unguided dives.

There are about twenty licenses in the Northern group of Vava’u, and each of those licenses has up to 5 boats.  And each of those boats is fully invested in making sure that the unguided diving law does not get broken.  All the marketing says this investment is one in the whales’ well-being, that licenses are granted to companies that “know how” to interact with the whales and anyone without this know-how might do something to harm the whales, even unintentionally.  It is hard to ignore the other side of this investment, though.  Swimming with the humpbacks in Tonga is also their greatest tourist draw, and therefore a big money-maker for the country.  Now I am not saying that these two facts cannot coexist, they very well can.  And I am not saying that I disagree with the law.  Far from it, I’m fully on board.  I am only saying that its existence is complicated by money.

But I digress.  So here we are, loading onto the boat, meeting our guide and our captain and our fellow passengers.  Some of the passengers know each other, and we learn that they have been on this boat for the past four days together, doing this very thing.  As the photographer at the feast said, they have all flown in from Canada/Indonesia/China/France for the express purpose of swimming with the humpback whales.  There is a young dive instructor who saved his hard won earnings to come, a freelance photographer for Nat Geo (on assignment), a honeymooning couple, and a CFO for a large Canadian company, newly “retired” (screw this shit; I quit, you corrupt bastards).  Our guide is no older than 22, a strong young Tongan man named Ofa, which means “love” in the Tongan language.  He lives up to his name, being sensitive and very sweet.  Ofa’s English is passable, but not great, and perhaps because I am also very sensitive, at least to other people’s discomfort, I try to be extra encouraging with big smiles, and he is soon directing all of his introductory and safety speeches at me (which, by the way, don’t really include an explanation of exactly what whale swimming entails).  By the end of the day, we have struck up a genial friendship, heavy on smiles, low on verbal communication.

We are motoring out from Neiafu (the main town where the whale swim offices all are) to the more open waters of the Vava’u island group, aiming at an island about an hour south called Fonua O’ne O’ne (meaning something sand sand).  We have been told that we will roam all around the calm and protected waters of the northern island group in our quest for humpbacks.  With islands spotting Vava’u’s full radius of 10ish miles, the shelter of the bay draws the whales every year at around this time, July through October, to mate and calve.  The best visibility for whale swimming is further out away from land, though not all boats venture out there if they find whales nearby that want to hang out (saves time and fuel).

As we get further out, Ofa tells us to suit up.  5 of us (the honeymooning Chinese couple included) are a little unsure, we don’t know at all what to expect, but nobody thinks to ask.  As we pulled out of the harbor, Ofa had broken us up in to two groups.  The law demands that no more than 6 people are in the water at once with a whale or group of whales.  So it is typical for a boat to take out 8 people and split them into 2 groups, each group taking their turn in the water, the guide accompanying both groups.  We have been well informed about this particular set up, we have been told to STAY TOGETHER and we have been told to obey everything Ofa tells us once we are in the water, but, still, no one has said anything about exactly what will happen once Group 1 jumps in the water.  Before long, Ofa spots our first whale.  He runs up to the captain’s deck, points it out, and runs back down to get us ready.  In about 3 minutes, Group 1 (I am part of Group 2) sits fidgeting in their wetsuits, fins and masks on and ready to go.  We have pictures.  We look really funny.  But it seems to me to speak well of the experience that even those who have done this for the past four days are so stoked to get in the water.

 

 

What happens next… is not very pretty.  I don’t say that because anything particularly bad happens, but rather because it’s… a little awkward.  The captain drives us up pretty close to the whale, but he can’t get REALLY close.  He halts the boat about 200 feet away.  And Ofa is yelling, “Group 1, follow me, stay together, go, go, go!”  He jumps in first, and the other four follow him as he starts swimming vigorously towards the whale.  I will not point to anyone in particular, but between the two groups, about half the people are not all that athletic.  One is much older.  Ofa hightails it towards the whale, popping his head up and looking back, waving Group 1 towards him and encouraging everyone to stay together, hurry!  I’m pretty sure some of the people have never even really used fins.  They are slow, they struggle in the water (which, by the way, is about 1000 meters deep out there, and how many people have been set loose in the middle of open ocean?  I have.  Scares the shit out of me every time).  By the time Ofa makes it to the whale, a large bull, the giant creature makes it pretty clear he doesn’t want to hang out.  He starts swimming away before most of the “whale swimmers” even get there, a few strokes of his incredibly powerful tail, and he’s basically out of sight (to give you an idea of that power, it only takes two strokes to launch a whale into a full breach).  The swimmers are left with a face full of whitewater, courtesy of the whale tail.  When they get back to the boat, some are panting, and the ones who haven’t done it before look bewildered.  Somehow, this was not what they were expecting.

For me, in Group 2, I only feel anxiety that I want my turn in the water.  And we set out after that same whale, to see if, maybe this time, he wants to play.  Though I am anxious to get in the water with a whale, that’s when the first little ding goes off in my head that, maybe, just maybe, this whole operation might be slightly less concerned with the whales’ safety than I had been led to believe, licenses and certifications and all.  Here we were, basically chasing down a whale that had already made it clear he wasn’t interested in hanging out.  While we had been warned that we may not find a whale that day that wanted to hang out (if we found any at all), the exact method of “encountering” the whales had not been laid out.  It seems a bit to me like we are… well, forcing our unwanted presence upon them.  But hold that thought.

When we get close enough to the bull, Ofa does the same routine (it honestly feels like we are in war and the sergeant is calling us to jump out of the plane down into battle), and away we swim.  My group has myself, my boyfriend, our captain, and the young dive instructor in it.  Three of us are young and fit, but our captain is 70 years old.  Incredibly fit for his age, you’d never know he was 70, free dives like a maniac, but still.  He just got launched into a sprint.  And, surprise surprise, the whale runs again.  I get there in time to see him, about 20 feet away, turn and flick that massive tail.  It’s an exhilarating experience, I won’t lie.  But part of that might be the way your heart is pumping after such a sprint.

This is pretty much the way it goes for the next 4 hours.  Poor Ofa rallies us into the water again and again (its actually just 3 more times, each group), we swim to the whales, and they bail.  We manage to scare off another big male, a mom and her calf, and a foursome of 3 males and a female (remember, it’s cetacean get-it-on season).  By lunchtime, Ofa looks stressed out.  He keeps saying, “Oh don’t worry, I will find you good whales.  The next ones, the next ones.”  From the start, Ofa has been overly excited, full of energy, but it’s been a nervous energy.   And it makes sense. He’s under immense pressure every day, every swim: Ofa is afraid of the dissatisfied customers who didn’t get close enough to a whale, or god forbid, didn’t even see one at all.  He is making a percentage of the profits, but day to day, all expectations get aimed directly at him.  He’s the guide, he’s supposed to guide us to whale swimming success.  And to give credence to his stress, the swimmers admittedly have lagging spirits.  Instead of the magical whale encounter of the shop’s posters, we’ve frantically chased ghosts all day.  The people who have been doing it for days and will do it for another 2 days are in okay spirits, but those of us with the one-off chance, at a cost of 200 US dollars… we’re outwardly keeping high spirits, but inwardly are a little sad.  We went into it knowing the chances, but you know, still feels a little like we got the bum end of a deal with nature.

(A quick side note: this feeling is really complicated.  Of course, if you pay for something, you can’t help but want the thing you paid for.  But when the thing you are paying for is “nature”, aka, something that happens or exists naturally, without human interference, you get a contradiction.  You can’t throw money at nature and make it perform because if you try to force nature onto a stage, it becomes instantly unnatural.  A zoo.  So is it wrong to advertise that you can make nature appear?  I don’t know, probably not, ecotourism pamphlets tend to make clear the possibility of a natural no-show.  But the contradiction holds.   I want to see the whales I paid for, but I want to see them as if I didn’t pay to see them.)

 

 

After lunch, we get one more chance– we’re supposed to head back to the docks at 2– so we set off to find more whales.  But half of the passengers say they don’t want to go back in the water.  They’re too tired from so much sprinting.  One guy is bleeding from a cut on his leg after slipping on deck during the launch commotion.  For myself and the other 3 who are still all riled up, it’s kind of cool that a whole group wants to sit it out (though I feel like a jerk even thinking it), that means I can go in on each jump.  No waiting.  But deep down, I’m thinking, this is messed up.  These people paid their money, but since no one made clear what would be expected of them physically, they are left unable to participate.  And we haven’t really swum with any whales yet!  I wonder how they feel, but they are all too polite to be outwardly irritated or bummed out.  My captain takes off his wetsuit and immediately falls asleep in the cabin.  The Canadian happily takes out her zoom lens camera.  And what is now Group 1+2 anxiously scan the waters.

Ok!  This is the point in the story where you finally get to read about what its really like to swim with the whales.  I know I’ve maybe sounded a little negative so far…  are we shielding the whales from harm or simply making money off of them?  Are we molesting them or simply hanging out with them?  But there has to be a point in the story where all the questioning slips away for a moment and we just look at the magical realm entered once confronted with such large, floating, wild animals, close enough to touch.  It’s mentioned again and again in travel blogs as one of the most thrilling experiences in the world.  I hate to admit it… no, actually, I don’t:  usually I’d feel like a sheep agreeing with a million travel blogs, but after having had the experience, everything they say is true.  Whale swimming is amazing.  One of a kind experience.  Mind blowing.  I simply cannot do the experience justice.

 

 

Ofa has spotted two whales.  We whip around and the new Super Group gets in the water. We kick as hard as we can, get over to them as fast as we can, and all of a sudden we are on top of them.  It’s a little jolting, like unexpectedly having to slam on the brakes.  But there they are.  I can reach out and touch them, though I don’t because I’m not supposed to, and though I am no avid rule follower, it seems as though it would be invasive.  The two whales are doing something called spy-hopping.  It’s when they just hang there in the water vertically with their noses poking out.

 

 

When we get there, and they don’t run away, we pop up, out of breath, yelling at each other, we’re so stoked.  Ofa thinks they are two younger males, though young still means 30 to 35 feet in length (longest one ever recorded was 89ft!), and that doesn’t even glance at their girth.  When you are floating 3 feet away from the center of such a whale, your entire vision is filled by only his mid-section.  You have to turn your head left, then right, to see either end.  Your heart is jumping frantically.  You know how big they are, how powerful, and how effortlessly they move in the water.  You are small.  You suck at swimming.  And they are so damn beautiful.

 

 

The whales are not motionless.  Their pectoral fins are moving lethargically, a slow motion treading of water.  Humpbacks have very long pectoral fins, the longest in relation to body size in the whale world.  When you are close enough to touch them, and one of those fins starts coming towards you, you are sure it will be the crushing end of you.  But, miraculously, every time, the fin passes just over your head, just under your fins, and you realize that these massive creatures are so perfectly aware of not only their own bodies in the water but also of yours that, even with their enormous bulk, they can dance pirouettes around you.  All of a sudden you feel safe.  And you realize that you have entered the personal space of a very aware being.  Your heart is still beating wildly, but the daze of wonder settles on you.  As you hang in a watery world, you watch the weightlessness of creatures larger than any you’ve ever seen, you absorb the effortlessness of their motions, you feel every moment as though you are being given the gift of their presence.  They are bestowing it upon you.  It may be cliche, it may be insufficient as an explanation.  But there is nothing in the world like it.

 

 

After about half an hour, another boat shows up.  Ofa leads us back to our boat, and we give the other boat a turn.  From what we can gather, all the companies do this, share whales with one another, though usually limiting themselves to 2 boats per whale group.  It gives a  more touristy feel to the whole thing, like an amusement ride with people waiting in line, but I can understand why the companies might participate in this sort of symbiotic sharing.  After another half hour, we are back in, same Group, my group.  Though we have encountered whales that do not run, the other group, the tired group, does not want to get in.  Again, I feel a tinge of sadness for them, a sense of injustice, but being only human, I eagerly jump back in.  This time, being a free-diver, I try to dive with them, get down and hang out underwater.  But I cannot calm my heart beating, and I am only mildly successful.  It doesn’t matter.  The intimacy usually bestowed by being underwater with a creature happens instantly with a whale.  Their size fills your whole world, they are right there.  Even mere moments of the underwater silence hanging next to them feel intimate.  Sometimes one will drop below the surface, take a horizontal position, and hang there, seemingly watching us.  I come eye to eye with one of them… am I wrong to imagine him surveying me, speaking to me through his giant pool of an eye, curious, inquisitive?

 

 

Time passes  quickly, we are out again as the other boat reenters.  Ofa, now happy and proud and effusive, says, “You seeing the whales?!  I told you I find you good whales!”  It is in fact almost 2pm, the time when we are supposed to head back to the docks.  The one half of the boat does not mind calling a wrap, but the other half of us are like heroin addicts.  The photographer comes over to me and whispers, “Ofa might listen if you ask, he definitely won’t listen to me.  See if we can go one more time.”  I am not usually the sort of person to do so, but I pipe up.  “One more time, Ofa, please.”  He hesitates, and everyone in the swimming group sings the same request.  He gives in.  I feel a little guilty, but not really.   At that moment, regardless of any misgivings about the complications associated with whale swimming, regardless of my quiet distain for organized tours, I perfectly understand why people spend thousands of dollars to come swim multiple times with the humpbacks in Tonga.

But eventually, all things must come to an end.   Back on the boat, Ofa is ecstatic.  A weight has been lifted off his shoulders, he has delivered.  “I told you I would find you good whales!”  And we are equally excited, blissed out, stoked, all of the above.  The ride back to the dock is quick, there is much camaraderie, even amongst those who simply watched from the boat.  It’s an elevation that carries onto land and into the night.  Most of us find ourselves at the only bar in town, enthusiastically buying each other drinks and speaking more loudly and sincerely than usual.  We are high, we are a little out of control.  Even the large, benignly gazing Aussie who owns the business is there.  Apparently his whale swimming group jumped out into the ocean to find themselves right on top of a large tiger shark.  He was celebrating his own kind of elation, and doing so quite drunkenly.

…..

And here, on that revelrous note, I end the story of our whale swimming adventure.  Now, all that remains of it are the photos.  And a keen sense that being in the water with humpback whales is, for lack of a better word, awesome.  And the slight taint of some itchy questions… Now, months away from the experience, it all blends together and leaves the whole  impression more one of confusion than anything else.  There’s that one, main burning question: is whale swimming helping or hurting the humpbacks in Tonga?

On a personal level, I see the value of coming face to face with a member of another species. Such up-close experiences make it all the easier to imagine that though another animal is not like you, they have their own intelligence and something like what we would call emotional interactions with their environments.  If everyone had access to such experiences, other creatures may fare better in this human dominated world.  But the truth is that we don’t really know the other side: what effect our interactions have on the whales.  Is this experience worth the risks we may be posing to the whales themselves?  Is it a risk to the whales?  Or is it a successful path towards conservation?

As I mentioned before, the whale swimming companies make the argument that ecotourism, and their efforts towards promoting and making it accessible, are helping the whales by keeping them safe from people with other, more sinister interests.  If tourists want to come in and spend money to swim with whales, then the humpbacks are creating jobs. Suddenly they more of a resource alive than dead.  Sure, conservation becomes a by-product of making money, but who’s to say that isn’t effective conservation? For those of us who appreciate our science in layman’s terms, myself included, RadioLab did a podcast a few years ago called The White Rhino (link) about the bidding off of the hunting rights for one of the last black rhino’s in the world.  The gist from the hunter’s POV is that if you have a body of people concerned with an animal populations’ well-being (in this case, in order to preserve that animal for the sport of hunting) they will  take it upon themselves to be the guardians of it and its environment.  (Read, hunter’s are the largest proponents for forest preservation: they want a place to hunt.)  They will also spend money pursuing their past-time, thereby employing the people who would be otherwise killing off the animals in search of black market profits, as in the case of the rhino.  Pay exhorbitant prices for the rights to kill one, that money goes to the preservation of the rest.

It seems an extreme form of the argument– “killing to preserve”?– because it is the extreme end of a spectrum.  The ecotourism of whale swimming is on that same spectrum, runs on exactly the same principal, but without the killing.   In this case, instead of hunting, people care about the opportunity to swim with whales.  They spend their money to do so.  This money goes to Tonga and to the whale swimming companies and eventually trickles down to the Tongan people in the form of jobs and tourist related services.  The companies, and the Tongans, are suddenly invested in protecting their natural resource: the whales.  Money talks.  And it seems like everyone is happy.  Everyone wins.  Even the whales.  Or maybe they do… has anyone asked them?

On our whale swimming tour, I saw several whale reactions to our boat.  I saw something I interpreted as “uninterested”.  I saw another whale react in a way I thought was “irritated” (some tail slapping on the surface).  And another that seemed “intrigued”.  But these are my layman’s terms for something that I have NO idea how to read.  Most of the time, it seemed like they just wanted us to f**k off.  And sometimes we ignored that and kept nipping at their heels like anxious puppies.  How, for lack of a better way to phrase it, did it make the whales feel?

Our understanding of cetaceans has come a pretty long way in the past 50 years (learn about humpbacks specifically at WhaleFacts).  Cool thing: back in the 60s, it was actually a recording of humpback song that ignited the interest in studying cetaceans and the idea that perhaps whales were more complex than we had hitherto given them credit, sighted as they had been from along the end of a harpoon.  As far as I can tell, the iconic Save the Whales campaign, arguably the first modern conservation movement and definitely the first ocean animals’ rights movement, was spawned directly from this interest.  Now, after decades of research, we credit cetaceans with things like curiosity and cultural and social learning (interesting article from NatGeo and essay from PNAS).  But we are still far from understanding the intricacies of their actions.  We have only just begun to whisper the words “culture” and “society”, and we hesitantly acknowledge that cetacean behavior is potentially driven by complex social interactions that we may never really understand (read Hal Whitehead’s article or his book The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins).  Some scientists even go so far as to suggest that whales have intelligence and language and tradition and hierarchy and close personal bonds and stories passed down.

The question then becomes, how much should we curtail our own interaction with whales when faced with this hazy half-knowledge of cetacean behavior?  If the humpbacks in Tonga are, in fact, feeling molested enough by whale swimming, they may change their migration and calving patterns, relocate to somewhere less protected or safe.  Our human actions, even if we are enacting them in a relatively conservative way, may still have unguessed at impacts on whale behavior and subsequent success.

Though ecotourism is a big old step towards a more humane and conservative relationship with humpbacks, is it enough?  One thing is certain: the swimming companies themselves see the worth in risking interaction.  And  therein lies the trouble with ecotourism.  In Tonga, these companies have been given control over access to the humpbacks, which, I do imagine, could aid in their protection if by doing nothing other than limiting humans from un-catered interaction.  But the argument that the whale swimming industry is helping with whale conservation efforts is, at its very least, problematic.  Commerce as motivation clouds the ideal of protection.  Once another incentive outside of mere preservation arises, preservation can easily fall by the wayside.  I do not wish to spotlight Ofa, especially not in any negative way, but noticing the stress he was under to deliver whales, it made me think about him and the particulars of his job.  Though the Tongan workers in the whale swimming industry are paid a very, very small percentage of the daily take, the pay is still quite large by Tongan standards.  It is a highly coveted job.  Couple this with the details of what it means to be successful at this job (making the customers happy), and it becomes easy to imagine that if I were in the same situation, I might end up making decisions that more ensure my customers’ happiness than the comfort of the whales.  It is not a statement about Tongans or Ofa or even the potential success of whale swimming as conservation, but rather about human nature under economic stress and the nature of incentives in a free market.  The combination is not ideal, at least not for the enactment of a strict form of conduct catered to keeping the humpbacks feeling happy and comfortable.

So then, wtf?  What do we do?  It seems obvious that taking the chance and continuing down the ecotourism path until we better understand how whale swimming affects the whales is worth it.  Worth it for, if nothing else, a closer interaction between species.  Worth it because it does limit the baddies access to the whales during their sensitive breeding/mating time.  And it does incentivize protection of humpbacks.  But worth noting that its mostly worth it because it is the best we can do right now and not because it is the embodiment of an ideal.  The buck can’t stop here.  Dedicated people continue to study cetaceans, and who knows, maybe we’ll have the answer to “does ecotourism mess with the whales too much” someday (not saying that anyone is directly studying this yet, but a girl can hope that one study (of human impact on whales, like the Center for Coastal Research does) might spawn another (of ecotourism + whales)).  And maybe we’ll even listen to that answer, if ever it comes.  Like in all the alien movies where we think the aliens are invading until someone deciphers their language and really they just want to be friends.  Shared language solves many conflicts…

In a perfect world, conservation has a non-monetary foundation. I would love universal dedication to the idea that, above all, we should attempt to acknowledge that though we do not understand another species’ “culture” or “intelligence”, we assume their livelihood to be equally as important as our own.  But we obviously don’t live in that world.  And bio-diversity just isn’t on everyone’s radar.  For some, poverty and hunger speak louder.  And for others, lots and lots of money does.  So, for now, if commercial gain prompts some attempt at conservation, well, it’s better than nothing.  Personally, I find the coupling of commerce and the appreciation of another species a dismal fact about human priorities… but then again, I did it, I swam with the whales. I paid for it, and I loved it.   I’d also pay for it again.  And I’d pay just as much to keep some people I know from doing it un-catered.  Can’t trust people.  We can be such wild beasts.