Ryan's Journal

"My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?" — David Mitchell

J’arrive

Posted from The Silver Bank, Dominican Republic at 6:30 pm, March 15th, 2009

After a moderately turbulent ride over here we arrived in the Silver Bank this morning, literally with whales surfacing, jumping, and fin slapping all around us – the number of whales here is phenomenal, and it’s generally impossible to stand on deck and not see at least four or five of the beasties. However, due to the mysteries embedded in the brains of these fifty foot long giants they DID manage to disappear completely any time we got in the water near one, so swimming with whales will have to wait for at least one more day. Our best opportunity today came at the end of the day when we found a tolerant mother and calf, dispatched Nelson to verify that they were OK with having people in the water, and then watched agonizely as Tom radioed a boat that was motoring in our direction to find out if they had been working this set of whales. When the affirmative answer came Nelson was frantically making the “get in the water” hand signals, and it was with some confusion that he was finally brought back to the boat.

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