Think big!

And a whale is about as big as it gets. Yes that's right, we sighted whales in the sea today! Let me clarify, the we here refers to those lucky few on the ship's bridge, and some of them were whale-watchers. Those guys see these things all the time! Some guys have all the luck in the world.

As soon as I heard that we had to suspend operations because the guns we use might hurt whales that had been sighted ahead (though how a big bubble of air can hurt something like a whale is beyone me), I went running to the for'ard heli-deck (yep, there's one of those on the ship too). But there wasn't a thing to see there, except of course the sparkling blue water stretching out to the horizon on all sides. When I finally reached the bridge, the Russian whale-watcher muttered something to me, which, the burly Polish interpreter clarified, meant that the whales had dissappeared about 10 minutes back. Dejected, I came back to my workstation, faced with the aftermath of the whale sighting - a huge amount of extra work required to restart the suspended operations.

As luck would have it, a little while later operations came to standstill once again and guess what?! More whales. This time I went straight up to the bridge! The burly interpreter handed me a pair of field glasses n pointed out towards the horizon, and I barely caught a glipse of the big black shape slip under a passing deep blue swell with a jet of spray squirted into the air. And that was the end of it.

I did get a picture of a whale though, from my friend, the Russian whale-watcher :).