"My experience was fantastic."
Jetwing Eco, a specialist wildlife tour firm, has been in contact with Anderson for more than four years and has also been collecting observation data off the south coast of the island of late.
Easy Spotting
A high concentration of blue whales and sperm whales has been spotted in the seas off Dondra Head along the deep south coast of Sri Lanka during the months of January to April.
"We spent most of April going out to the sea, to see marine mammals and we have been very successful," says Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, chief executive of Jetwing Eco.
"Our naturalist at the Light House hotel in Galle, Anoma Algiyawadu, went out on 24 occasions up to April 26, and on very one of those occasions, he saw blue whales.
"Anoma had sometimes seen three, some times five and even ten blue whales, off Dondra point.
"I went out myself and I too saw blue whales every single occasion, I also saw sperm whales on different occasions," he said.
The frequency as well as the proximity to the shore makes Sri Lanka one of the easiest places in the world to spot blue or sperm whales.
Blue whales are possibly the largest animals on earth growing up to some 110 feet in length and weighing up to some 180 metric tons.
They feed on krill, a shrimp like marine invertebrate. Sperm whales, the largest carnivore mammals, mostly feed on squid and octopus in the deep sea bed.
Naturalists say conditions around the island are good for whale habitat due to the nutrient flow from the country's river system.
Migration Path
Anderson believes some of the blue whales off Dondra Head could be resident whales while others could be migratory ones crossing over to the Arabian Sea from the Bay of Bengal.
"He [Anderson] began to suspect that there could be a migration of whales," Wijeyeratne said.
"He suspected that in January they would be passing Sri Lanka on the way to Bay of Bengal and in April they will be passing Sri Lanka again down the south coast passing Maldives to the Arabian Sea.
Whales like deep waters. Off Dondra Head the continental shelf narrows sharply.
Commercial whale watching in Sri Lanka was first mooted in the 1980s following documentation of whale sightings in the Trincomalee bay by marine biologists of the research vessel The Tulip.
"They found out that blue whales and sperm whales were coming into the Trincomalee harbour using a submarine canyon," Wijeyeratne, citing findings of the research, said.
Whales of Trincomalee had also featured in the award winning film "Whales weep not", the first underwater filming of Sperm whales in their natural habitat.
Though Trincomalee was earlier tipped to be a whale watching hot spot, security restrictions had shelved projects to develop whale watching in the area.
The Voyage of Odyssey, the second research vessel to do research on marine life off Sri Lanka's southern coast in 2003, had also documented whale sightings.
"To see a Blue whale at sea is something most of us can only dream about. To see more than one in a lifetime is a rarity reserved for a fortunate few," Genevieve Johnson, a research crew member, was quoted as saying in one of the reports in 2003.
"To see so many in Sri Lankan waters is good news indeed."
Whale Watching
Recent sightings of whales in the southern seas were reported by a group called the Mirissa Water Sports, funded by the firm Loadstar.
They have been documenting whale sightings since April 2006.
It is these sightings that had confirmed Marine biologist Anderson’s theory of whale migration around Sri Lanka during January and April.
Increased sightings of both blue whales and sperm whales off the southern coast have now opened up a window of opportunity for whale watching tourism in the island's Deep South.
With infrastructure and vital data at hand whale watching tourism is gathering momentum in the south.
Walkers Tours, the travel arm of John Keells Holdings, has already started whale watching tours in Sri Lanka after a lapse of more than 20 years.
According to marine biologists, the deep sea off Dondra Head is one of the best locations to watch whales in Sri Lanka because of its close proximity to the coast.
Narrow Shelf
"Charles, having studied the hydrographic charts, realized that the shape of the continental shelf around Sri Lanka was such that the best place to see whales was off Dondra Head," Wijeyeratne said.
"Off Dondra Head the continental shelf is just 6 km out and the 100 meter depth line falls to a kilometer and two kilometers very rapidly.
"We have seen whales sometimes as little as 40 minutes out to the sea.
"If you head out to sea from Mirissa and travel south of Dondra you are virtually guaranteed to see a blue whale in April," Wijeyeratne said.
High concentration of both blue whales and sperm whales within easy reach under tropical conditions puts Sri Lanka on top of the world's whale watching map.
Specialist wildlife tour operators like Jetwing say they hope to market and publicize whale watching aimed at attracting nature lovers and marine researchers for the next whale migratory season from December to April 2009.
With less security restrictions, whale watching could become one of the biggest tourism assets for the country’s deep south, attracting the international whale watching market and foreign media.
"If whale watching gets under way, we will be seeing a whale watching industry developing along the waters off Galle, Weligama, Mirissa to Matara," says Wijeyeratne.
"If whale watching gets under way in December to April, each boat could be charging ten to fifteen thousand rupees to take tourists out to sea, it may be better than fishing."
However, a build up of whale watching activity could also put the welfare of these marine mammals at risk.
"We have to make sure that the boat owners and tour operators do this in a responsible manner. We mustn’t disrupt their social dynamics and we mustn’t create stress," Wijeyeratne said.
"Whales communicate with sound. They use long songs and clicks and noise from ship propellers create a lot of background noise that could disrupt their communication.
"We certainly don’t want twenty boats surrounding one blue whale adding on to the animal’s stress," he said.
Some countries still hunt whales on the pretext of doing scientific research, but the Indian Ocean is a whale sanctuary.
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