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The Magazine of SriLankan Airlines. www.srilankan.aero November & December 2009 Features: Whale Watching Sri Lankan Architecture World Spice Festival Colombo Christmas Shopping Leopard Spotting In Style, In Yala National Park Destinations: Tangalle Fact File Milanese Style Malé, Maldives Sri Lanka Highlights ©Chitral Jayatilake

Srilanka Leopard spotting by Vacation Srilanka Tours

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Page 1: Srilanka Leopard spotting by Vacation Srilanka Tours

The Magazine of SriLankan Airlines. www.srilankan.aeroNovember & December 2009

Features:

Whale WatchingSri Lankan ArchitectureWorld Spice FestivalColombo Christmas Shopping

Leopard SpottingIn Style, In Yala National Park

Destinations:

Tangalle Fact FileMilanese StyleMalé, MaldivesSri Lanka Highlights

©C

hitr

al J

ayat

ilake

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November/December 2009 www.srilankan.aero50

Header - CopyNature - One Year On

In May 2008, I began an aggressive publicity campaign to publicise the south of Sri Lanka as the best place in the world for seeing Blue Whales. By April 2009, Sri Lanka had completed its first full-fledged year of commercial whale watching. My publicity blitz began in the May 2008 special edition of the Sri Lanka Wildlife eNewsletter. This was followed up by a related story in the November/December 2008 issue of Serendib.

I did not discover that Blue Whales can be seen off Southern Sri Lanka. My claim to fame lies in my realisation and efforts to tell the world about one of Sri Lanka’s best-kept marine life secrets. One year on, so well has the story been seeded, that there are many claimants to having been the first to see the Blue Whales, or to take credit for getting commercial whale watching off the ground.

But I know that the ‘new story’ began with a small coalition of people, and the discovery that Dondra Head, the

southernmost tip of Sri Lanka, could be the best land-based location for watching Blue Whales. After a pair of British volunteers stumbled across whales in Sri Lanka’s southern waters in April 2006, and another scientist’s further testing of a theory of a migration of Blue Whales in April 2007, I ventured from the fishery harbour of Mirissa in April 2008.

April 1, 2008 was a pivotal date. Within 40 minutes we encountered our first whales, then several more. After processing my RAW image files and consulting four books I had brought with me, I announced that we had both the largest Baleen Whale (Blue Whale) and the largest Toothed Whale (Sperm Whale) ‘in the bag’. Without doubt, I was now on the biggest positive story in the context of Sri Lankan wildlife and natural history.

We proceeded to record 22 whale watching days in April 2008, with a 100% record of Blue Whale sightings. In April 2009, the monsoon closed in early, and

during 15 sailings, Blue Whales were seen on 14.

Anxious to gain a complete data history, as soon as the seas calmed again in October 2008, I resumed my search for whales. By now, Anoma Alagiyawadu, naturalist of the Jetwing Lighthouse Hotel, had been out on many whale watching trips. Thus, by April 2009 we had gathered a comprehensive and compelling year-round data history which showed that Sri Lanka is unmatched for the ease and likelihood of seeing Blue Whales. During the 2008/09 season, Anoma clocked an exhausting 75 whale watching trips, while we collected data on 108 sailings, with Blue Whales seen on over 70% of them. The strike rate is higher when off-season sailings are taken out.

On April 1, 2009, a year on from when it began for me, I was on the first of two back-to-back whale watching groups with Dr. Charles Anderson. My Blue Whale anniversary day passed without me seeing

Words and photography by Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne

One Year OnBest for Blue

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Nature - One Year On

a single whale, unlike a year earlier. But if this had been the case in 2008, I may not have returned to the southern seas on my way back from Yala, and Sri Lanka could still be unheralded as the best place for Blue Whales in the world. There would not have been a queue of people wanting to meet Dr. Charles Anderson on his return in April 2009. But fortunately it had worked out on April 1, 2008.

And it was not bad in April 2009 either, the whales who had failed to show up on my Blue Whale anniversary day making up for it on April 2. In the space of an hour we had a Bryde’s Whale, Blue Whale, and six Sperm Whales. In those first two days of April we also sighted examples of different dolphin varieties – a total of eight species of cetaceans in two days. It showed how good Sri Lanka is for cetaceans.

I joined Charles again in the second week of April for two more sailings. On one trip – having discounted possible repeat

sightings – his group recorded what they believed were ten individual Blue Whales. Dr. Anderson’s groups also proved useful for collecting a different type of data. His clients were people who had searched for Blue Whales elsewhere and were able to provide first-hand comparative information, notably about the paucity of Blue Whale sightings in many locations around the world.

In August 2008 I asked whale watching tour leaders about their encounter rates in other parts of the world which are listed for Blue Whales. It soon became overwhelmingly clear that Sri Lanka was

pre-eminent. When the next season began, I could approach my story with even more confidence.

I had taken a gamble in 2008, having placed a lot of faith in Dr. Anderson’s work and run my story based on one month’s data, that of April 2008. But in that month, I once had eight Blue Whales spouting, simultaneously, in view. Having extensively reviewed the literature, I knew that in the space of a few seconds of viewing time, I was seeing more Blue Whales than people in other Blue Whale watching sites in the world may see on a ten-day live-aboard trip. I decided to take

“In the space of an hour we had a Bryde’s Whale, Blue Whale and six Sperm Whales. In those first two days of April we also had Spinner, Indo-Pacific Bottlenosed, Pantropical Spotted and Striped Dolphins. A total of eight species of cetaceans in two days. .”

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Header - CopyNature - One Year On

a risk and go public with the story in Serendib, as well as Sri Lanka’s glossy Hi!! magazine for the social set. Soon, anyone who was anyone in Sri Lankan society circles decided that they had to go whale watching. A young and passionate team of media and advertising professionals headed by Dileep Mudadeniya and the then recently-formed Sri Lankan Tourism Promotion Bureau also made a significant contribution. Understanding better than anyone else the publicity value of Sri Lanka’s Blue Whales as a media hook, they began facilitating visits for media, diplomats, and many others, assisted by media briefs which I prepared for them.

Another bonus was the tie-up between the Ceylon Fishery Harbours Corporation and Walkers Tours, which resulted in more boats being provided and, equally importantly, Walkers Tours ensuring that whale watching is on the itineraries of

the many large tour operators handled by their company.

Sri Lanka’s first full-fledged year of commercial whale watching had many pleasant highlights for me. Amongst international celebrities who were drawn to the experience was Germaine Greer, the acclaimed Australian feminist and author. Heading out in drizzle and stiff wind, the boat rocking in the swell, over 20 Sperm Whales logged past us, with one group of seven tightly packed against each other. A few days earlier, with Steve White, editor of Action Asia, we watched two Humpback Whales creating arcs of white foam as they breached, cavorting in the water whilst using their long white pectoral fins to slap the water. Five Blue Whales also spouted simultaneously around the boat.

With Lewis Borge-Cardona I narrated for the Sri Lankan Airlines in-flight radio program

the story of ‘Best for Blue’, whilst Blue Whales whooshed and blew towering white spouts near the boat.

But the periods I spent at sea with Charles Anderson are those I will always treasure. His wit is as sharp as his mind, and with his trained eye he sees things and species which I would have easily overlooked.

That year, along with Chitral Jayatilake I also attended meetings convened by the National Aquatic Resources Agency (NARA) and the Sri Lanka Tourist Development Authority (SLTDA) to discuss legislation drafted by Sri Lanka’s Department of Wildlife Conservation (DLWC). While it will be necessary, before long, to introduce licensing for accredited whale watching boat providers, it is to be hoped that such legislation will be intelligent,

“...Heading out in drizzle and stiff wind, the boat rocking in the swell, over 20 Sperm Whales logged past us, with one group of seven tightly packed against each other.”

When to go: During December to April on days when the seas are calm. The migration of Blue and Sperm Whales peak during December-January and again in April as they travel eastward and westward respectively.

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Nature - One Year On

practical, and enforceable, ensuring the welfare of marine wildlife and client safety, whilst allowing the impoverished south to develop a viable economic resource.

And as commercial whale watching becomes a success, the debate will become more heated with claims as to who started it all. A few research vessels conducted surveys on Sri Lankan waters beginning in the 1980s, while there was more than one attempt to start commercial whale watching from Trincomalee. But the credit for the first truly successful and sustained effort for commercial whale watching in Sri Lanka must go to a small group of tsunami-affected fishing youth from the humble fishing communities of the south, assisted by the Build a Future Foundation.

The man who unlocked it for me and laid the scientific foundation for my press blitz is undoubtedly Dr. Charles Anderson. Without him, we would still be waiting for the seas off Trinco’ to be deregulated for leisure pursuits in a post-war environment. The story I took to the world, that Sri Lanka is ‘Best for Blue’, is only the ‘new story’. But it is really an old one which we had forgotten. Long before any modern cetacean researchers visited, Sri Lanka’s south coast was known to the whalers of ancient times. A map drawn by Ptolemy in the second century AD describes the area around Kumana as the Cape of Whales. Two thousand years ago, people who knew what we know now came and hunted our whales. More recently, in the 19th century, the Boston whalers came to Sri Lanka to catch whales, and details of their catches are recorded in shipping intelligence registers. So my story is indeed an old story, one which we had forgotten, about a century or more ago.