A Whale Of A Time

We had a �whale of a time’ and the whale said thank you.

One sunny September morning while returning from a dive in the crystal clear waters of Mauritius I received a call for help on the boats VHF radio. Being a scuba diving instructor and owner of a diving center on the tropical Island of Mauritius I was doing what we usually do each day. Diving. But this day would turn out to be an unusual day.

Prodive Limited Scuba Diving in Mauritius is a professional scuba diving school and dive center. I have been in the business for 24 years on Mauritius and the oldest Instructor and dive center owner on the Island. We had just taken delivery of our new luxury 46 foot dive boat cruiser complete with cabins, showers, head and galley. Fitted with two Ford turbo six cylinder inboard motors. I was at the helm enjoying the feeling of another successful dive charter and the luxury of the new big dive boat. Behind me was a group of very happy divers and my instructors and divemasters all discussing what we had seen and what has happened on the dive. This is the usual chatting and debriefing that goes on after the dive and is all part of the sensation of Scuba Diving. While steering the boat through the pass (a gap in the barrier reef that surrounds Mauritius) the boats VHF radio crackled and in between the noise coming from behind me and the sound of the motors I could make out that there was a call for help. Somebody asking all dive centers in the north to come and help to save a whale.

After we had returned the divers to our base I explained to my crew and dive team that there was a whale stranded in some way. With out hesitation we decided to go and see what had happened. I was enthusiastic and excited at the prospect of an adventure and this gave me the chance to test the new boat on a distance run.

Apparently the whale was stranded in �Turtle Bay� which is a small horseshoe shaped bay south of our base but still in the north west of the Island. The local radio station was playing some good music and the boats motors were humming as we cruised south to Turtle Bay. It took around a half an hour to arrive at the northern point of a rocky out crop forming the edge of one side of the horseshoe shaped bay. I cut back the throttles to slow the boat speed as we entered the bay checking for the pass in the barrier reef and summing up what was happening inside the bay.

The bay was alive. The surface was boiling with divers splashing around in the water. Disorganized and everywhere, swimming in all directions. In between all this mess I could see some white buoys floating on the surface and then disappearing underwater. A fountain of water spraying into the air as the whale surfaced away from the divers who were awkwardly splashing around in the water. Everyone seemed to be ready to help and at the same time hesitant to approach the suffering Humped Back Whale. Buoys and bits of rope and net were floating everywhere. They had being cutting away at the end of the mass of entangled net dragging behind the whale. But this was not the solution. I knew that we had to get to where it was attached to the whale tale and take it all away at one time. My dive team where ready and donned masks snorkels and fins. We could see the fishing net dotted with white �polystyrene’ buoys entangled around the whales tail. This mass of net, rope and buoys preventing the whale from swimming causing immense drag. As the whale moved away from the divers in the water I tried to judge the direction it would move to and spun the helm quickly to gentle maneuver the boat into ahead on position to the direction the whale would take. The dive team, a group of five scuba instructor and divemasters with �dive knives’ in their hands. Some had a normal typical Mauritian fish knife with a long but very flexible blade that can be easily sharpened and cuts through anything. Everything was happening very quickly.