February and March is whale watching season here in Okinawa and I was able to go with Joel and Jenni one weekend at the end of February. It was quite the eventful day... here's the story:
I woke up that Saturday at 5:30 in the morning to a very large earthquake. Later we found out that it was a 7.0 magnitude earthquake about 30 miles off the coast of Okinawa. I was unable to go back to sleep (which frustrated me since it was the first Saturday in a while that I was supposedly going to be able to sleep in) Here in Okinawa, because we live on such a small island, any earthquake automatically results in tsunami warnings. My apartment is located on high enough ground that I don't really have to worry about that, but I was bummed because I assumed our whale watching trip would be canceled. Well, the "tsunami" hit and it was only a few feet high so other than extra turbulent water and the possibility of aftershocks from the quake, there weren't very many post-earthquake issues. Later that afternoon, we still went down to the dock to see if the whale watching tour was still going to happen or not. Sure enough, they were continuing on. I have never been sea sick before, or even car sick for that matter. In fact, I have read many books in back seats of cars and busses, ridden on ferries and boats in both lakes and the ocean... I wasn't worried about getting sick. Well... I got sick, really sick. The waves were really high and the boat was really rocking... I'm not sure if the earthquake earlier in the day made it worse but it sure didn't help any. We did see whales but they weren't very close up... but it was still really cool. In between hurling over the side of the boat with other passengers and barely spotting the whales to begin with, I didn't get any pictures of the whales... but I downloaded a few pictures from google images to show everyone what I saw. After whale watching, Joel, Jenni, Kenny and I went to Chilli's on base... let me tell you, chips and salsa have never tasted so good... It was a very long, weird, crazy, cool, not so cool day. As for the whale watching, it was a neat experience but I'm not sure if I'd do it again... and if I do... Dramamine is a must.
Jenni & I on the boat before leaving the dock
Joel & Jenni with the lovely orange lifejackets
orange lifejackets are so attractive
Just to clarify, I did not take this picture but this is basically what we saw. We would see the mist come from the blowholes and then we'd see their backs pop out of the water just for a second. Then they'd go back down and a few seconds later we'd see their tails. Jenni had an eye for them and would point them out. I started feeling better after a while and saw more towards the end but I didn't see as many as Jenni... I blame the nausea.
When the tails came up they were much easier to spot than their backs, but by that time you see the tails, they are headed back down deep and don't surface again for several minutes. When we were headed back to shore, they finally started playing around and we saw a few jump out of the water... it was really cool but they were pretty far away by that point. I think they were intentionally teasing us... that or rejoicing that we were leaving them alone. However, by the time that happened I had lost all food and liquid in my stomach and didn't care that they were finally being less shy... I just wanted to get back to dry land and get something salty to settle my stomach. It was pretty cool to see them jumping and playing out in the wild though.
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