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Completely out of film and nearly out of air. It's still happening, but I have to leave. I check my pressure gauge - 400 psi. Enough to get back to the boat with average luck. I don't want to swim on the surface. It's blowing more than forty miles per hour up there and that makes surface swimming a drag. My snorkel is strapped under my stabilizing jacket but my hands are so cold, I'd have difficulty getting it out. My dive computer reads 53 degrees. I'm swimming fast at forty feet navigating by crossing at an angle to the ripples in the sand. I should slow down to conserve air. It's "Victory at Sea" on the surface. But I'm anxious to get back, to get more air, more film. More anxious than I've ever been. I'm not looking forward to getting back aboard that little boat. It's only twenty-four feet long and hardly adequate for a film production team. I have to walk on my camera equipment to get to a fresh air tank and there's a good chance of soaking the inside of my camera while changing film. Still, it's almost a miracle we have this boat at all. Patagonia is not the most popular dive spot in the world. Working here would have been entirely impossible without the herculean efforts of my Argentinean friend, Carlos Sanchez. The undeveloped images in my camera would have been impossible without him. "Thanks, Carlos", I say to myself as I push my way across the sand. How much further can the boat be? I'm thinking about trying to get that snorkel out. My fingers are numb. Bob Cranston and Marty Snyderman left before me. They had smaller tanks. I have a Scubapro 95. We had to bring our tanks with us, and a 300 pound air compressor. Dive stores are in short supply in Patagonia. My heart is racing. I'm consciously trying to come down from the experience I just had. Excitement increases air consumption. Now only 300 psi left. But then I catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of my three window mask. I turn with a start. Good God, it's only inches from my left shoulder. I know it instantly. It's a callosity, a raised patch of rough white skin on the nose of a fifty foot long female southern right whale! At first I think she is going to collide with me. But a fraction of a second later, I realize she's following me back to the boat! As whales go, she is moving incredibly slowly, but still she is overtaking me. I want to move to my right to avoid being bumped. The collision wouldn't hurt me, but I don't want to frighten the whale. Like an elephant is frightened by a mouse. Silly thought. I can't simply kick to my right because I would need to move my fins to the left to propel myself away. She is too close for that. So I scull the water with my hands to move away. I'm cold and excited. Had I been thinking more clearly I'd have realized that the whale would have changed directions slightly to avoid hitting me. She just wants me to scratch her above the eye. "Sorry, beautiful, I have to go". Adrenaline is causing my legs to tremble. I look up to see the dive platform and two pairs of fins on it. Bob and Marty have reequipped themselves and are ready to jump back in. But the female whale's calf passes next to the swim step and they have to wait. I wait too. I turn to my left. Mom is still there incredibly close. In forty foot visibility I can't see her whole body. I reach out and scratch the cyamid whale lice away from the callosity above her right eye. She leans slightly in my direction. She wants me to scratch harder. One more scratch then I swim to the surface. "Sorry, just wait, I'll be back". This can't be happening! Marty and Bob descend into the green water. With the help of our boat operators, Hector and Pantera, I change tanks and film quickly. Waves break over the bow. Hector and Pantera are wearing wet suits and are soaked to the bone. They're freezing in the forty knot wind and ocean spray and yet they have unfaltering smiles. The air is colder than the water. Amazingly, my 16mm movie film stays dry long enough to get it out of the dark bag and into the can. A moment later I'm back in the frigid water. Forty feet below, Marty and Bob are standing on the bottom thirty feet apart. Marty points his movie camera away from me and I see his running light come on. Bob is pointing his still camera. This tells me the whales are coming even though I can't see them yet. I turn my camera on as well. A moment later a shadow transforms into the shape of a whale's enormous head. I'm rolling as the whale stops between Marty and Bob. I exhale the air in my lungs and drop toward the bottom careful to hold the movie camera steady as I punch a shot of air into my DUI dry suit. Bob shoots several pictures then rewards the whale with a rub on her chin. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. Forty minutes later, I hear a click in my camera that tells me I'm out of film. That's it. No more film in the camera. No more film on the boat. And I'm breathing the last 600 psi out of our last tank. I stand on the bottom and look up at the under- side of the mother whale. She is, perhaps, fifteen feet wide at the base of the pectoral fins. Her tail flukes spread more than fifteen feet across. The baby whale descends beneath her repeatedly to look me over. I look too. I look and look, trying desperately to create a vivid memory that will stay with me the rest of my life. I know how special this is. The southern right whale is one of the most endangered species of whale on the planet. I watch the "V" shaped spouts as the whales' exhale, atomizing water vapor into mist against the setting sun as our boat pounds its way back to Puerto Pyramid. I'd like to think I will see these animals again. I pray silently to a God who has witnessed millions of extinctions on this planet that these whales be spared the explosive harpoon of pirate whalers as they migrate south and east toward the dangerous coast of Africa. "Let these whales be spared", I say. And in that moment I think of Bob Fishman too. This film was Bob's idea, his dream. And on the eve of our departure his health failed him and he had to remain behind. In three years these whales will return to the Valdez Peninsula. I hope Bob and I are there to greet them. Pierre de Lespinois, who is co-producing this CBS documentary film with Bob Fishman, returned to New York two days earlier. Peter Horton (star of "Thirtysomething") and Matt Biondi (five Olympic gold medals in swimming) left with Pierre. In the film, Peter and Matt will use their celebrity status to speak for the whales and the future of wilderness on our planet. The film will air on CBS near the beginning of 1990. Many people will watch it, many will not. Many people will simply page through it with their remote control boxes. It will last an hour. An hour. But Pierre and Peter, Matt and Marty, Bob and Carlos, and I got something more from it than a one hour television show. Something indescribable. Something that will be with us throughout our lives. We all had the chance to look closely into a great whale's eye. And therein, mysterious and perhaps unfathomable yet undisguised, we saw something more than just our reflections. Save the whales!
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Writings
By Howard and Michele