Right now, Hervey Bay, Australia, is seeing the highest number of whales in 25 years. According to Wally Franklin of The Oceania Project there are a record number of whales migrating down the coast. In fact, he estimates 14,000 whales in the humpback population of eastern Australia. Franklin also strongly believes that this trend will continue into November, as mother humpbacks teach their calves how to breach, lob-tail, head-lunge, and pectoral-slap.
With whale-watching expeditions running until mid-November, there is still time to sign-up and see of the action yourself. For more information, click here.
The headline was too horrid on so many fronts to pass up.
It turns out 29-year-old Irishman Keith Whelan, attempting to become the first of his nation to row solo across the Indian Ocean – despite as far as I can glean having little rowing experience, just naked ambition and a Twitter account – had been slapped by a big wave 128 miles off the coast of Australia, cracked his head on a protruding bolt and called for help. A cargo ship, the Fujisuka — having nothing better to do — diverted course, picked him up and delivered him back to shore at Bunbury, where he held … drum roll … a press conference.
How do we know all this? Thanks to his constant tweeting and blogging and the 24/7 reach of the global media.
Before we go any further with the story of this faux adventure, why oh why did he opt to row naked? According to his website it was “to avoid painful chafing from salt encrusted clothing.” (“Having gotten into a rowing boat for the first time only a year or so beforehand, he will spend 110 days alone at sea, facing 50 foot swells, hurricane force winds and unrelenting sunshine … and he’ll be naked.”)
Not to mention the attention the word naked still garners in headlines, Twitter feeds and Google searches.
I’m not suggesting the guy shouldn’t be able to ‘define’ adventure in his own terms. With most corners of the world already explored in a variety of fashions, those who seek adventure are forced after a fashion to find new ways of doing them. People have walked up Everest on behalf of every imaginable disease, attempted long walks, long rows, long sails, etc., going forwards, backwards, sideways and upside down to try and draw attention to their pursuit. Whelan is hardly the first. (His charity is Keep A Child Alive, for which to-date he’s raised about $700 … out of a hoped-for $15,000).
But there is something missing, something lackluster, about much of the ‘adventuring’ we’re seeing in the early years of the 21st century? Rather than truly fulfilling dreams or accomplishing something brand new (Ed Stafford’s walking of the length of the Amazon stands out as a good example) it seems today all you need is an attention grabbing moniker, a sat phone for delivering constant updates to your blog, a charitable cause, some kind of ‘first’ (will climbing Everest naked be next for Whelan?), a contact for ‘media requests’ and – succeed or fail – a now-mandatory press conference.
I’m not suggesting we go back to the days when Robert Falcon Scott and team froze to death 10 miles from a depot (texting might have helped keep them alive)… or when the best rationale climbers could come up with for risking their lives on Himalayan peaks was ‘because it’s there’ … but it seems there are more and more inexperienced people launching adventures these days and getting sizable attention most often for their ineptitude, thanks to the instant reach of social media.
According to his tweets, Whelan is back on shore (after a “tough day, very long” aboard the cargo ship) and “up for trying the 3,600 mile solo row again.”
Given the way this adventure has started for the lad, I’d advise the ‘freelance events manager’ from County Kildare consider a year off for further planning.
Even before being rescued his Indian Ocean attempt suffered a variety of setbacks, beginning with severe seasickness. On May 11 he ran into trouble soon after launching and had to be rescued by a passing fishing boat, which towed him to a nearby island. After setting out again, on May 24 he blogged that he was back on the mainland after strong winds and bad weather blew him off course. Ready to depart one more time, he was alerted – by his Australian host, he apparently hadn’t noticed himself – that the boat’s rudder was badly damaged and needed serious repair.
Before starting this misadventure, this is how Whelan explained his motivation at his website: “I am a risk taker and risking your life to achieve a dream is the biggest risk you can take. Some might say it’s foolish but to my mind it is only foolish if you don’t know the risks and you don’t prepare for them and train for every possible scenario.”
My question is, Did he really understand the risks and was he prepared for ‘every possible scenario?’ Or was he just being foolish?
Whelan is not the only soloist attempting to cross the Indian Ocean this season; my friend Roz Savage – who at the very least has earned her headlines by previously having rowed across the Atlantic and Pacific – is now more than 40 days out.
Her daily blogs often tend to focus as much on the hi-tech side of modern-day adventuring — whether its failing GPS’s, trickiness downloading emails or sat phones calls ‘with Mum’ being disconnected – as the ocean world around her (the daily repetitiveness of which can, I’m sure, get very boring).
Reading postings from the middle of the ocean by these modern day adventurists makes me wonder what 140 character missives Thor Heyerdahl would have sent back from the balsa wood raft Kon Tiki in the 1940s.
“Another yellowfin commits suicide by throwing itself aboard; Bengt keeping the three of us up with incessant snoring”
Adonis Pulatus took these time lapse shots while aboard the Queen Mary 2 as it sailed from New York to the Caribbean last December. The luxury ocean liner appears to stay perfectly static as waves crash all around, making the boat almost appear to be photoshopped over a video of the deep blue. But Cunard’s ship isn’t really just a giant speed boat racing through the water, a fact that becomes clear once some brave souls zip around the swimming pool in the chilly air.
Deemed the “most luxurious ocean liner ever built,” the ship has been privy to an unfortunate series of events lately. Last month five women and four men – believed to be illegal Chinese immigrants – were taken into custody just after landing in New York. Before that, a 40-year-old stage hand was sentenced on child porn charges last September. Perhaps this is why the ship appears mostly empty in the videos – or maybe it’s just the cold.
The first time I met Richard Branson we were in the kitchen of a small bed and breakfast in the high-Arctic Inuit village of Clyde River. Taller and blonder than I expected, he was dressed in full cold-weather gear and had just flown in by private plane to join a dogsled expedition. Slightly bemused, he was struggling to figure out how to microwave a cup of tea.
I think of that scene whenever he announces he’s setting off on a new adventure – whether by hot air balloon, cigarette boat or, as of this month, one-man submarine. While exceedingly bold, maybe even brave, I’m not convinced technology is his strong suit … which makes me a bit worried when he announces he intends to go deeper below the surface of the ocean than any man or woman before, to explore the bottoms of the five oceans.
His $10 million “Virgin Oceanic” is the continuation of a project begun by Branson’s friend and former ballooning partner Steve Fossett (whose small plane mysteriously disappeared over the Nevada desert in 2007). The goal is to take the ultra-lightweight sub to the deepest, least-explored parts of the planet … perhaps simultaneous to the date sometime later this year when his “Virgin Galactic” rockets its first paying passengers ($200,000 per seat) into space.Nothing Branson sets out to do is small. He’s become the Steve Jobs of high-end adventure in that it seems anything he proposes is quickly bought up by wealthy folks who would follow him anywhere. His attitude is equal parts measured and cavalier. “I have a great difficulty saying no,” he admits. “Life’s so much more fun saying yes.”
The Deepflight Challenger was built by the leader in sophisticated submersibles, Hawkes Ocean Technologies of Point Richmond, CA, and is the brainchild of renowned ocean engineer and inventor Graham Hawkes. Branson intends to use the 18-foot-long, 8000-pound craft in what he’s calling the Virgin Oceanic Five Dives project, hoping to take it to the deepest point in each of the five oceans. The Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and Moss Landing Marine Labs have signed on to support the scientific efforts of the team, which will study marine life, the tectonic plates and help Google Ocean map the ocean floor in 3D.
Hawkes has also constructed submarines for upcoming explorations of the Gulf of Aqaba, Jordan, and a multi-year ocean expedition led by venture capitalist Tom Perkins.
“I love a challenge,” says Branson. “When I learned that only one person had gone below 18,000 feet under water and the sea goes down to 36,000-feet, it seemed to unbelievable. And talking to scientists and finding out that 80 percent of species on earth haven’t been discovered yet – that’s unbelievable. Knowing there are thousands of shipwrecks on the bottom of the sea that never have been discovered is pretty good fun as well.”
Searching for gold-laden Spanish galleons could be another part of the adventure, as is setting records. In the spirit of Fossett – who loved setting records and owned 115 when he died– the dives will include setting 30 Guinness World records. It is hardly a risk-free adventure. A leak or engine malfunction at depths where pressure is 1,000 times normal would be catastrophic, for both man and machine.
They hope the first of the Five Dives explorations will take place as early as this summer when explorer Chris Walsh captains the sub to the bottom of the Pacific’s Mariana Trench, more than 30,000 feet below sea level. Branson intends to captain the next trip, to the bottom of the Atlantic’s Puerto Rico Trench, a mere 25,000 feet below.
The other three areas to be explored are the Diamantina Trench in the Indian Ocean (26,041 feet), the South Sandwich Trench in the southern Atlantic (23, 737) and the Molloy Deep in the Arctic Ocean (18,399).
The carbon fiber and titanium submarine should be able to go 7 miles below the surface of the sea and be on its own for up to 24 hours, though the hope is that each trip to the bottom, and return, will take no more than five hours. Its ‘wings’ will essentially allow it to ‘fly’ over the ocean floor collecting data.
Before each dive remote-controlled vehicles (ROVs) will be sent down, armed with bait, to stir up marine life, which will be filmed by the submarine that follows.
Branson already owns a three-person version of the sub, also built by Hawkes – the “Necker Nymph” – which he rents for $2,500 a day at his private Caribbean island resort.
“This experimental trip to the bottom of the ocean could lead to bigger crafts,” says Branson. “We’ve coined the phrase aquanaut – anyone who goes below 20,000 feet – there’s only one person at the moment and it would be fun to make as many aquanauts as there are astronauts.”
Branson is familiar with adventuring risks. In 1972, marlin fishing off Cozumel, he swam two miles to shore when his boat was swamped by 10-foot waves. In 1977 he was the first to try flying a kind of tricycle with wings and managed to land it after soaring hundreds of feet off the ground; its inventor was killed a week later doing the same thing. He’s been nearly killed skydiving and rappelling down a Las Vegas hotel and plucked from the ocean on numerous occasions when his balloons went down.
When we traveled together in the Arctic, Sir Richard (only his mother still calls him Ricky) told me about getting lost in the north woods of Canada when one of his ballooning adventures went awry. “We called on the radio and told the guy who responded that we were on a frozen lake surrounded by fir trees. He paused a minute before saying, ‘Well, this is Canada … you could be in any of ten thousand places.’ ” A rescue chopper picked them up eight hours later.
Such luck won’t be an option at 25,000 feet below; if something goes wrong down there he better have packed an extra set of wings.
Fakarava Atoll, the Tuamotus, French Polynesia – Maru’s 16-foot, plywood fishing boat, steered by one metal rod coming straight out of the floorboards in his left hand and accelerated by another rod held tightly in his right hand, hugs the eastern edge of Passe Garuae. One of only two passes accessing the atoll’s thirty-six-by-twenty-one mile lagoon, twice day big water rushes either in or out and navigation requires years of experience.
As we try to edge our way out onto the South Pacific for a day of fishing, currents at the heart of the pass are running out at about seven knots, creating what appear to be standing riptides. If we were anywhere near the center, we’d most likely be cart wheeled by the fast-moving water and big waves.
Maru, a 46-year-old native of Fakarava – the Tuamotus’ second-largest atoll – has driven boats through here thousands of time, so far without incident. I’m hoping his luck stays.
Despite a population of about 700 on this remote atoll 150 miles north and east of Tahiti, there are surprisingly few people making a living off fishing. It’s not because there aren’t fish, but because the big industry here – black pearls-has become more lucrative and in some respects easier. Though the boom in the growing of black pearls has weakened the industry a bit in recent years by flooding the market – every Polynesian with access to the ocean wants in on the business – it doesn’t require risking life and limb on the open ocean everyday.
Maru tells me he prefers this life than the more intensive routine of seeding oysters and monitoring them for more than a year and a half, hoping they’ll produce pearls. His days are routine, leaving from the docks of Fakarava’s one town around six and returning by two or three in the afternoon. His catch provides the bulk of the fresh fish for the atoll’s residents. This day he’ll take a dozen big mahi-mahi, spearing them from his boat while simultaneously steering and accelerating. He surveys for signs of a small school – watching for the big fish to break the surface – and then chases them down, tiring them. It requires a skill-set few Westerners can imagine: Steering, accelerating, scouting and spearing, all with only two hands.He is a man of few words, especially when intent on the catch. But after he pulls in his last fish of the morning he admits that he feels “more alive” when he’s out on the sea. Today the ocean is nearly glassy-calm, though there are days when it is not quite so paradise-like. Gray skies and big winds do visit this corner of French Polynesia, though he admits they are rare.
Fishing for jacks or sharks inside the big lagoon is an option, but for the big, wild fish – bonito, yellow-fin tuna, mahi-mahi, barracuda or paru, a large red perch – the ocean is the place.
My real curiosity with Maru is if there are plenty of fish here in this part of the Pacific or if numbers are decreasing. Since he fishes six days a week, he’s the best source on the atoll and assures me there are plenty of fish in his ocean and that he catches as much as he wants, on any day.
The biggest pressure here is not what the locals take from the sea though; it is the pressure of illegal fishing by big boats from China, Japan, Europe and even South America. A 200-mile EEZ protects all of French Polynesia’s 130 islands and the territory has agreements with some fishing fleets to allow quotas on yellow-fin tuna catches. But last year a Spanish trawler with motor trouble was towed into the Marquesan island of Nuka Hiva, loaded with illegally caught fish. A Venezuelan boat was fined $635,000 and its captain jailed for a month recently for taking at least 80 tons of tuna over a few weeks in the same waters.
The beautiful, seemingly trouble-free waters that surround us this day are emblematic of a global ocean dilemma. While there are plenty of international and local laws on the books to protect against poaching and illegal fishing, enforcement is very difficult. The 130 islands of Polynesia cover just 1,622 square miles of land but the territory includes nearly 1 million square miles of ocean. With a small Navy, supported by tax-dollars from France, surveying all that blue is a difficult task.
To Maru, such concerns seem to come from another world. His focus is pretty narrow, mostly on tomorrow, maybe the end of the week. He says he rarely sees signs of international fishermen – though they are out there, all around – and brags that on any given day he can fill his bright-red boat with big, colorful fish. The trickier challenge for him is that the market is not what it used to be.
“It used to be that everything I caught was sold in Fakarava,” he says, after successfully navigating against still-outgoing currents in the pass and into the lagoon. “Now, because we get so much food flown in or by cargo boat from Tahiti, there are less people buying.” He often ends up freezing part of his catch and selling it to bigger boats heading back to Tahiti.
“It’s easier when I sell everything to my neighbors,” he says. “But wherever the fish sell, I’m happy.”