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| June 27th-July 9th |
| 07.19.04 (9:06 pm) [edit] |
Exmouth Marina/Tantabiddi Boat Ramp/Whalesong
"If life is a journey, then your body's the vehicle and fat is the luggage; the heavier the luggage, the shorter the journey." - Curt Jenner
My first day onboard Whalesong was mostly spent in a horizontal position, following three stints spent doubled over the stern railing, puking my breakfast into the Indian Ocean. As a child, I was prone to severe motion sickness, something that I've grown out of with age, but sea sickness brought back all the old feelings.
Miche and the kids had gone into Exmouth with the 4x4 and so Curt sailed Whalesong north and around to the western side of the cape, mooring just off the Tantabiddi boat ramp, 38km outside of Exmouth.
The boat ramp is used by fishermen to access the ocean and as a launching point for all the charter boats--whale shark tours, diving tours, glass bottom tours, snorkelling tours. The Jenners have their own mooring off the ramp and this is where they stay during the winter months; the summer months they moor off of Rottnest island, just off the coast from Perth. The reason for their annual migration is because the humpback whales migrate up the coast to mate and give birth to calves during the winter; during the summer, they feed in the Antartic waters, fattening up for the winter.
Seas were rather choppy going around the cape, so I spent the day lying flat on deck, trying to keep it cool, munching on crackers and downing glasses of water provided by a considerate Curt. Winds hadn't been favourable, so Curt motored the whole way, although the main sheet was up the whole time--Whalesong cruises at around 7-8 knots. By late afternoon, we made it to the boat ramp and I was more or less vertical, even half-able to grab the moorings with a graplling hook.
Curt and I dropped the 12 foot inflatable zodiac that had been lashed onboard and waited for the rest of the family to arrive at the ramp, by car. An hour later, Miche and the kids appeared with groceries, clean clothes, and good cheer.
The next two weeks were very tranquil, interwoven with periods of great activity. As Whalesong is both home and workplace for a family of four, as well as a sea-going catamaran, it is both interesting and impressive to witness how things work onboard.
First of all, Curt and Miche all day, pretty much everyday--and every day starts at 7am--earlier if they're going out to survey whales. As scientists, sailors, and parents, they operate as a tight team and run a tight ship, all the while remaining affable and easy-going. Curt is a good Canadian boy from the Prairies and Miche Australian, although she grew up in New Zealand.
As a guest onboard, I was unsure how I would fit in with the family; while they are used to having guests, I was neither a paying guest, volunteer, or research scientist: the usual people who hang out with these guys. In other words, I was bumming a free ride and had little to give back in return, either in sailing experience or marine biology.
Micheline is a formidable woman: every day she gets breakfast ready for Micha, Tasmin, and myself (the three kids). Then, Monday to Friday, at 830am, school begins; during the summer, when they are off of Rottnest, Micah in enrolled at the Rottnest Island School; during the winter, Miche teaches both kids, as they are enrolled in the distance learning program. Miche teaches Micah and Tasmin until 3pm--math teacher, english teacher, art teacher, etc., and hardest of all, disciplinarian. The day is broken up by breaks and lunch, which Miche also prepares. On the breaks, Miche will do exercises and try to catch her breath, quickly reading a magazine or scientific journal on deck.
The distance learning program involves a distance teacher who corresponds with Miche and the kids, with Miche filling out weekly progress forms, requests for books and other learning aids (CDs, DVDs, videos). However, outside of this, Miche must make up for the difference--and with these things, the more that she can contribute to the material enhances the education of the child.
This means that Miche draws numerous outlines of creatures for Tasmin to colour in, writes problem sheets for Micah to fill in, and really just goes the distance to spice up the curriculum.
At the end of the day, she then gets the kids to clean up the galley/living room and make way for dinner--which she also cooks up, in record time.
Thus, Miche is both teacher, mother, cook, and marine biologist. Inside Whalesong are watercolours that she has also done in her spare time; in other words, Miche is multi-talented lady.
Curt, first thing in the morning, brews himself some of the strongest coffee I've ever had. It's an awesome way to start the day, drinking a cup of super dark french roast whilst watching the dawn grace the Cape Ranges National Park and the Indian Ocean with rose coloured fingertips.
Coffee in hand, he then checks the weather reports for the west coast online and proceeds on the day's business, whether it be maintaining Whalesong and the million and a half small items that need constant repair and upgrade, crunching numbers for the company budget (Miche and Curt operate their own, independent, non-profit organization, called The Centre for Whale Research), fixing computers, getting tough with the kids when they refuse to do their teacher's bidding, and thinking of new ways to increase their organization's funding.
These are their 'non-working' days--I had the chance to 'participate' in four surveys which constitute the backbone of their research. On these days, we would start at 630am and leave the mooring before 730--on these days, the kids get the day off school, watching videos and playing inside while mom and dad stand on deck, sailing and watching the ocean with intent eyes.
Whalesong is a 44 foot twin-hulled cat, with the sleeping cabins and an office in the hulls, the galley/living room and navigation table in the bridge between the hulls. There is an overhang that covers the wheel deck and a wooden table set to one side. Windows and hatches keep things airy inside. Up to 10 can sleep on board, although this I imagine would make for rather tight quarters.
There is, of course, the head, with power pump salt-water flush and fresh water sink: the ocean is the bathtub. The galley is small but very well equipped with a four top gas stove, oven, and grill, a drop down fridge/freezer, and nifty cabinets that hold all the pots, pans, and foodstuff. There is a sink that has a power salt water pump and a brass hand pump for the fresh water.
When they first started their research in WA, 15 years or so ago, Curt and Miche conducted their surveys in a 14 foot zodiac, working and living out of a tin shed Curt built on an island off of the Dampier Peninsula, 1000km+ further north of Exmouth. After several years, they realized that their research would require them to go further out into the ocean--while the zodiac allowed them a great deal of mobility, it was too small, too short in the water, and wasn't very comfortable.
So they decided to build their own boat--this saves money but it is a serious undertaking. Peter built Sky entirely on his own--and it took him four and a half years to complete. Peter, admitedly, did not set himself an agenda, however, Curt had never built anything previously, except for the tin shed, and it took him and Miche two summer vacations to complete. Curt credits this feat to a friend of theirs at Dampier who was also building a catamaran at the time and who had previously built one in the past. "Anytime I had a question," Curt told me, "I just had to call across my pile of wood to this guy and he could fix me up just by yelling back."
Previous to WA, they had worked in Maui, Hawaii, in San Juan, off the coast of Seattle, working with Killer whales and humpbacks. Encouraged by one of their employers, they decided to set up their own project in WA, seeing that in terms of humpback whale research it was then a completely unknown area. Now, at present, they are pretty much [u]the[/u] experts on humpbacks in WA, and remain the only people in Australia who conduct research, year round, living on the ocean.
Accordingly, I felt very privileged to be hosted by such a couple and even come along and witness them at work. Sighting the whales is a job shared by both Miche and Curt, although Miche is the eyes 100% of the time, while Curt watches when he isn't sailing Whalesong. The surveys are conducted in two sets: the first is an experimental, the second is the control, these two extended across a two day period.
Whalesong moves off the coast and then traverses a series of tranzacs--lines of 3 to 9 nautical miles, 1.8km to the nm--with dog legs several nm long inbetween each tranzac. In this way, they travel a pizza slice shape of ocean in orderly lines, only noting sightings when made on a tranzac, not a dog leg.
All sightings are recorded along with time, heading, which direction the whales are moving in, what their behaviour is (breach, blow, pectoral fin slap, tail slap, resting, etc.), and number in each pod. Also included in the log book are other cetaceans sighted, such as dolphins and other whales. If possible, Curt photographs the whales in action with a telephoto lens attached to a high end digital SLR camera.
On the first survey we passed by a pod of several hundred striped dolphins, and about thirty came over to us to bow-ride Whalesong, shooting in and out of the water at the bow.
The things about whale watching is that their is a lot of ocean to watch over and the sightings can be several nm away. My eyes are not great to start with and sighting the whales requires experience; Miche and Curt would see a blow, call it out, record it, point it out to me, and still I would see nothing but water, sky, cloud. Miche's eyesight is also fantastic--she has true eagle-eye vision, meaning that she sees at 40ft what everyone else sees at 20ft distance from themselves.
One of the most impressive sights that I've ever seen is watching a humpback breach repeatedly, time and time again. These are massive creatures and they literally launch their entire body out of the water, arching themselves so that they slap the surface with deliberate effect when they come back down. Bulls will do this for several reasons: compete for a female whale, compete against another bull, do it for fun, and for what else, who truly knows.
Unfortunately, my first survey was marred by sea sickness, although I did not throw up my breakfast; my subsequent surveys were not so badly affected by nausea, but it was only on the fourth that I actually got my sea legs and did not feel amiss for the whole day.
The first survey, the experimental, 41 whale pods were sighted and 83nm travelled; the second, the control, we saw only 10, and travelled 52nm. The third was another experimental of 81nm and we saw about 35+--but we also saw many dolphins, five sea snakes, and a 6ft hammerhead shark passed right by the bow. The last control was 53nm and we saw more whales, of indeterminate numbers.
Each survey lasted the whole day, and we'd return to the boat ramp by sun down, around 530 or so, and have a big dinner.
Every weekend, Miche would go into town with the kids to run errands, and I would come with them. Exmouth's a town dependent on tourism; in fact, it didn't really exist until the tourist trade based around the Ningaloo reef and the Whale Sharks got going. Previously, Exmouth was noted only for its American Naval base, where ULF towers dominate the skyline, communicating with every single US submarine in the world. These days, the US base has become an Australian owned base, although they lease it to the US and the US staffs the entire base.
Overall, then, the 15 days I spent onboard Whalesong were interesting and illuminating: I learned a few knots from Curt, watched Miche cook many good meals, polished the stainless steel on deck, helped to fix a few computer problems, did some watercolours, read a couple books ('Atomised' by Michel Houellebecq, 'The Perfect Storm' by Sebastian Junger, and I began but did not finish a very interesting book called 'Longitude' by Dava Sobel. I also read many recent National Geographics, which, thankfully, have dropped their pro-US-in-Irak articles, and have gone back to their meat and potatoes: the non-political natural world.
I also read an article by Miche that appeared in Australian Geographic several years ago, that described what her and Curt do for a living. A few scientific journals that Miche passed me were read, with great interest; I tried to learn something about the stars, reading a star book but was unable to stay awake to observe the sky each night. Curt broke out the 2004 NHL Stanley Cup Finals between the Lightning and the Flames that his dad had sent him in the mail and we watched games 1 and 6. Many conversations were had, too many to detail here, but all in all, I had a very good time and learned a bit about whale research. Most evenings after dinner we would watch a movie before retiring, so I watched a few good movies in this time.
In the end, of course, I had to move on; my stay on Whalesong was made possible because of a set of circumstances: normally, Curt and Miche take on two researchers during the winter. Fortunately for me, one had to leave Australia for Singapore so as to renew her visa; the other was recovering from laser eye surgery, so as to improve her whale watching vision.
One last thing: I spent a great deal of time playing with Micah and Tasmin, children of the sea, if there ever was. While I would stay seated on deck, trying to keep my lunch in place, they would bounce around on the bow netting hung between the hulld, 'trampoling' into the air with each roll over the waves. They also had a juvenile peach faced song bird on board that they would take out and let fly from one person's head to another, or to the rigging.
Hanging out with kids, though, is good fun, and I tried my best not to be too boring.
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| Exmouth/Tantabiddi/Whalesong |
| 07.13.04 (5:46 am) [edit] |
Where was I?
Saturday, June 26th, sunshine, hot, usual weather.
Right--Exmouth. When I met the Jenners at the Exmouth Marina, they were just about ready to get themselves organized for their move over to the Tantabiddi boat ramp. The boat ramp is located 38km away from Exmouth, just north and around the cape, over to the western side of the ranges that are the defining feature of the landscape.
At the Exmouth, Whalesong is refuelled (500litres), takes on water (300l), and that's about it--while the water figure is uncertain, the fuel and water will last for two-three weeks, depending largely on the number of people who are on board and the number of hours that the motors are used.
Miche goes on a major dry food run before leaving their summer residence off of Rottnest island; like the north in Canada, most food goods are higher in price as soon as you get out of the southern growing regions.
Whalesong has nine bunks--although a few of these are not designed with tall or fat people in mind. For myself, I got a good-sized one, so only my backpack had to contend with the more diminutive mattress.
Not only did I now have a bed to sleep on, but a markedly improved diet. My eating pattern in Coral Bay had been nutritious, albeit a bit high in salt. Pancakes for breakfast, with the occasional oatmeal option exercised, with dried apples and cinammon, sugar, reconstituted cream, and brown sugar. Lunch, if I was either near to camp or in the mood to cook, was usually an instant noodle with an instant soup packet dumped in it for good measure. Dinner, a pack of dried pasta with sauce, dried peas, some dried chinese sausage, dried fruit for desert, some butterscotch candy, some shortbread cookies, and jasmine tea for a nite cap.
Lacking, therefore, from my diet was fresh fruit or vegetables, variety, and a whole lot of flavour. I had packed salt, pepper, dried garlic, mixed herbs (oregano, basil, crushed bay leaf), yet these additives just sometimes couldn't revive the dehydrated pastas. Not only that, the instant pasta dinners are somewhat heavy, night after night. In the last two days at CB, I ate just twice a day, deleting the dried pasta from the menu. I can do the instant noodles for quite a while, even eating them for breakfast on several occasions, but those pasta dinners are intense.
That first night onboard Whalesong was great: we had a tomato meat sauce pasta which may sound like little different from what I was eating, but believe me, it was worlds apart from what I was eating. We then capped off the night with a movie (?) and I stayed up way past my bedtime, passing out at 1130pm.
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| June 19th - July 13th |
| 07.12.04 (8:38 pm) [edit] |
Some dates:
Coral Bay, 17th June to 26th June
Exmouth/Tantabiddi Boat Ramp/Whalesong, 26th June to July 11th
Broome, July 11th to July 13th
Coral Bay
Indeed, there is much to describe from the last month. Originally, I left Perth on a whim based mostly on suggestions from local residents: 'Go north, if I could,' they'd say, 'catch the good weather.' Indeed, the weather was looking pretty grey and feeling pretty cold when I was last in Perth and, apparently, things are still very much the same there, with rain tossed in for good measure.
Coral Bay, then, was the only destination I had. I packed a few t-shirts, a pair of shorts, pair of pants, my bathing suit, sandles, shoes, hat, and a whole lot of camping gear. The rest of my clothing I left back in Perth, at Mary's house. I foresaw myself staying out of the city for at most a month.
Coral Bay's a beautiful location with an ugly town dumped on it. The town wasn't on a map that Peter had from 1975--the place has developed directly with the discovery that Whale Sharks come to feed every year off the Ningaloo reef. It's a major business and all the tour operators are at each other's necks for the business.
There are two large caravan parks, a resort hotel, a backpacker's hostel, two supermarkets, a bakery, an old bearded painter called Nelson, Artist, and a half dozen tour operators, offering glass bottom boat tours of the reef, Whale Shark viewing, SCUBA diving lessons, dives, ATV tours... the whole shebang.
Australians do the caravan parks in a serious way: generators, freezer, fridge or two, massive gas ranges, lights, big 4X4s, trailers, tents, chairs, tables, a kitchen pantry worth of condiments, oils, and seasonings. They park in a powered lot for a long period of time and just fish, fish, and fish. The fishermen come home at 530pm and stagger off the charter boats with eskies full of fish. They then stagger back to their cars or shuttle bus and get off in town, ready to butcher their haul.
It's a pretty spectacle to see 40 so men, all fat, all sun burnt, all drunk, butchering fish at the butcher tables at the end of the day. There isn't enough room for them all, so there's usually a good audience present to witness the scales and guts flying through the air. You can take 40 fish a day per fisherman of the least threatened category, 15 from the second, middle, category, and 5 or less from the 1st. And boy, these guys take the max.
The water is blue, the sky is clear, the beaches white, empty, the essence of tranquility, and it's pretty much 25C+ every day. Unfortunately, all the coral that is immediately around the town is all dead. The tour operators claim that the cause behind the death of 25% of Coral Bay's coral and 50% of its fish population is a bad coincidence of nature.
In 1991 and again in the late 90s, a strong westerly wind blew the new coral spawn into shore, causing the coral to choke on itself and thus also seriously affecting the fish life that sustains itself on the reef's good health. The spawning lasts two days and is spontaneous--the discovery that the coral spawning coincides with the Whale Shark's feeding was the major scientific discovery that now underlines the industry.
'Freak of nature,' the guide of the glass-bottomed boat said to my group. Strange logic, because the majority of the coral on the Ningaloo reef is slow growing--taking several hundred years to achieve the massive size that makes the reef what it is--barrier and shelter. In other words, any previous freak of weather that may have caused this sort of massive coral destruction would still be noticeable. Nevermind that coral is all dead immediately around the town and that the death of the coral around town just so coincided with the massive increase of tourism in the area.
I talked to Curt Jenner about this suject a few weeks later one evening aboard Whalesong. He said that the death of the coral coincided with the low season in Coral Bay--so all the caravan parks dump fertilizer and pesticides on their lawns to make things look good for the next season. All run-off goes into the bay, including the contents of any leaking septic tanks.
The man who discovered the correlation between coral spawning and whale shark migration wrote a book on the subject. Dr Geoff Taylor is a medical doctor who took a personal interest in the Whale Sharks and pretty much pioneered their study in WA. Patsy had given me his book to read and he had mentioned the death of coral around coral bay as directly linked with the eflueva from Coral Bay itself. Like Curt, he believed that the town's poor sewage treatment was the cause of all the reef's problems.
Coral Bay was fun, though--I camped out south of the town, illegally I think, for seven days in all, and spent two nights in the Caravan park at the end of the trip, sharing a site with Lauren, one of the passive agressive surfer bums Caroline and I had met on our first day in town.
As it turns out, Lauren and Peter Briers are a married couple who have emigrated from South Africa. They had been camped out, also illegally, on the point just south of Paradise beach for the past two and a half weeks. The night that Caroline left, I came upon them at night, burning a nice fire. They offered me cheap port and told me their tale. Peter's showed me a proper S. African bushman fire, slow burning, hot, smokeless, and using only small branches as fuel.
Peter soon got some work on a fishing boat for a few days. Lauren decided that she wasn't comfortable staying out byherself on the point at night--and I felt like I owed the caravan park some money for all the water I was borrowing from them each day. As it turns out, I shouldn't have been so honest: the water consumption in the caravan park is pretty high, so my measly 3-4 litres a day was but a drop in the bucket.
Either way, I needed a good shower, some laundry action, and I had to get in touch with Curt and Micheline Jenner. When I met this couple and their two kids several weeks back in Freo, they had said that if I was in the area, they would be happy to host me onboard their home, a 44 foot catamaran named the R. V. Whalesong.
'Research Vessel' Whalesong does just that: it goes on the ocean and observes whales in action.
Because my cheap-o mobile carrier didn't get me reception in Coral Bay--only SOS calls--I needed to be near a pay phone. Eventually, after some phone tag, I managed to confirm with Curt that I was making my way to Exmouth on Saturday, June 26th.
One benefit from hanging out with Lauren at the caravan park, waiting for Peter's return, was that I met two of her friends. John and Sinead are two Irish on their way around the country by car--and for ten bucks, I secured myself a seat with them for the 152km trip north to Exmouth.
The trip was uneventful, although there was a heart stopping pause when the car wouldn't respond to the accelerator--something to do with a dirty fuel pump.
But I made it to Exmouth and the Exmouth Marina, where Whalesong was moored.
Exmouth/Tantabiddi
The Jenners research humpback, pygmy, and blue whales year-round from their cat(amaran). They run a non-profit, independent, organization called 'Centre for Whale Research.' As it turns out, they are unique in Australia: no one else conducts year-round whale research, living on the ocean, in the whole country. This is the result of a lot of hard work and gumption on their part.
Okay... a bit of a pause. I'll keep at this tomorrow. Cheers.
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| Beginnings... |
| 07.09.04 (11:25 pm) [edit] |
July 11th
Okay, I'm now in Exmouth, waiting for my midnight bus, attempt #2. Last nite, the automated electronic storage locker outside of the Exmouth Visitors Centre refused to open up and held my luggage hostage. I tried to repair the damage by sticking my fingers in behind pried out buttons all to try to move the deadbolt back out of it's hole. A procedure that short circuited the machine, which had thankfully had its alarm system disabled by the nite-shift phone operator based in Queensland, via the internet.
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