On this first encounter, we were unsure if it was safe to approach the whales. They had large white teeth and we had no idea if they might bite us if we tried to help them. Eventually I handed the video camera to Penny and approached the closest one, stroking its back and talking quietly. There was no sign of aggressive behaviour so I began trying to push it head-first back into deeper water.
The Chateau was the terminus for the daily school and mail bus run from the small coastal village of Bicheno, 26 miles away. When the bus arrived, owner/driver Mike Dicker heard about the drama unfolding on the beach and joined us there. In addition to his bus business, Mike moonlighted as a photographer and immediately began taking fabulous photographs. While the three stranded whales struggled to free themselves from the beach, the remainder of the pod hovered just off shore. We could clearly hear their high pitched calls. From the video we captures there and subsequently, scientists estimated that the pod numbered up to about 80 whales.
Two of the stranded whales were able to free themselves and return to the pod. With a little help from Mike and me, the third one eventually floated off and also returned to the pod. At this point, Josh and I grabbed our wetsuits and with Mike at the oars we rowed out to the pod. I decided to join the whales in the water and slipped over the side wearing my snorkelling gear. When I was certain that the whales meant us no harm, I invited Josh into the water as well. To this day, that swim with the pilot whales remains one of our most treasured father-and-son experiences. Little did we know that our whale adventure had only just begun!
That evening, Mike submitted his photographs to Rod Scott, editor of the northern Tasmanian daily newspaper, The Examiner. Rod had a holiday home at Cole’s Bay, and we were all acquainted. The next day, The Examiner ran the whale rescue story on the front page, complete with Mike’s dramatic photos. Later that day I received a phone call at The Chateau from a news editor at ABC, the Australian national radio & TV corporation. ABC was interested in running a TV news story and asked for details of the current situation. I told them it was possible that the whales might strand again as they attempted to navigate their way out of ten mile wide Great Adventure Bay. ABC decided to send a news crew via helicopter to interview us. We advised them that it would be safe to land the helicopter on Richardson’s Beach, at the exact location of the stranding.
When the helicopter arrived, it circled The Chateau once and we ran to the beach, carrying the video camera to capture the moment. The crew set up their gear and interviewed me about the previous day’s adventure. During the interview I suggested that the pod might still be in danger of re-stranding and said that it would probably be worth investigating to determine where they were. At that point the crew invited 6 year old Josh and me to join them on a search. I will never forget the look of quiet satisfaction on Josh’s face as we took off and circled his waterfront home of the past year before swooping off to the south in search of the whales.
In a matter of minutes we discovered the pod hovering just off shore at Hazards Beach. The helicopter landed and the camera crew set up on the beach, the reporter using the backdrop of the pod of whales to update his news story. We then clambered back aboard the helicopter for the ride back to Coles Bay. ABC TV news ran the story nationally that evening.
I
The next day dawned overcast with a steady southerly breeze of about 15 knots. By then Rod Scott had arrived at his Coles Bay holiday cottage from his home in Launceston. Rod, Mike and I decided to go in search of the pod aboard Rod’s 18’ fibreglass runabout. Josh decided to stay home, but Rod’s 6 year old son Oliver joined us for the trip. We set off into the choppy conditions, rounding Quarry Point, south past Refuge Island off Hazards Beach where we had spotted them from the helicopter and continued south to Cooks Beach where we found 5 stranded whales. We anchored the boat just off the beach and waded ashore in our wet suits. Two of the whales were dead, but three were still alive, lying parallel to the water’s edge. Occasionally they would lift their heads or tails and take a deep breath.
We immediately set about trying to free the smallest whale. Fortunately the tide was coming in, so all the whales were fairly close to the water’s edge. At first we tried using the shovels we had brought to try to clear a trench to deeper water, but each time we scooped the sand away the wave action quickly filled our trench. Next we tried pulling it by the tale, but this caused the stiffly pointed pectoral fins to dig into the sand, halting our progress. Once we discovered this we reverted to attempting to turn them until their heads were pointing out to sea, one of us at each side pulling from the “arm pit” behind the pectoral fins.
Even the smallest of the three whales, perhaps nine or ten feet long, was far too heavy for us to move. While two of us strained and grunted with effort, the third would try to comfort the whale, stroking its head, brushing sand from its eyes and speaking gently to calm it. We would also take turns to grab the video camera and capture some footage of our efforts, and Mike shot lots of excellent still photos of the rescue effort in progress.
We were concerned to discover that the skin of the “arm pit” region was so delicate that our efforts attempting to pull the whale head first broke the skin. When we failed to budge it with that method we reverted to tail first once again, all three of us pulling the whale around 180 degrees, then pulling with all our combined strength.
We were excited to eventually make some small progress with this method, which encouraged us to try harder, eventually getting the smallest whale into deeper water. As soon as it floated free, it swam off towards the pod and we all give a cheer, pumping our fists in the air.
Our first successful rescue spurred us on to help the next smallest whale - about 11 feet long. Now that we had settled on the most effective way to move them - by pulling their tail towards the water - we adopted this method immediately with the second whale and soon had it free. This time as it became clear that it was about to float free of the beach, I ran to the camera and filmed its return to the pod.
The third and final live whale still stranded was by far the largest - maybe 14 feet long. On its side was a partly healed round wound, which we later discovered was caused by a cookie cutter shark bite. This wound made it easy to identify. Given the struggle we had been through to free the two smaller whales, we held out little hope that we could successfully free this one, however we set about trying the same method by attempting to pull its large tail seaward.
Earlier in the day, we had radioed back to Coles Bay for help. (This was 1988, prior to cell phones.) We were suddenly delighted to see three runabouts loaded with people zoom around the north west corner of Cooks Beach and head towards us. We hoped that with enough people pulling there was still enough time to free the last big stranded whale before it’s own weight crushed its internal organs.
Sure enough, within a couple of minutes of the arrival of the three extra boat crews, we had successfully hauled the whale back into deep water. Mike stayed with it for a few minutes while it gathered its bearings and regained its balance, before heading slowly back to the pod.
At that point we gathered up our tools, I handed the video camera to Penny on one of the newly arrived boats and Rod, Mike and I returned to Rod’s boat before rejoining the pod in the water. Many of them were spy hopping, trying to get their bearings and figure out their escape route from Cook’s Beach.
I was particularly delighted when the large whale with the shark bite on its side and our final successful rescue swam right up to me and looked me in the eye. It was clearly a gesture of acknowledgment for saving its life, and a moment of pure emotion I have never forgotten.
The four boats remained for a while, surrounded by the pod of spy hopping whales, prior to making our way back to Coles Bay. At that point we were sure that the adventure was winding down, but when we returned to The Chateau we learned that the Tasmanian Wild Life Branch was sending a marine biologist up the next day to conduct a necropsy on the two dead whale carcasses to try to determine if there were any obvious health factors that might have caused the stranding.
Because of Penny’s operating room experience, the biologist invited her to assist him with the necropsy, so back we went to Cook’s Beach the following day to show the biologists the location of the carcasses, after which Penny assisted with his research. There were a couple of abnormalities in the brain and inner ear, but nothing that could be definitively blamed for causing the stranding.
The next call regarding the stranding came from the ABC head office in Sydney, requesting access to all of our video footage. Because it was shot on a North American NTSC video camera, it required specialized equipment only available in Sydney to transpose the video to the Australian PAL system. I agreed to share the tape with them, but only on condition that they fly me to Sydney and back so that the tape would not leave my possession. They agreed to this, so I made a rushed overnight flight to Sydney. While there I was contacted by a scientist who was studying pilot whale stranding and was interested in owning a copy of our tape for research purposes. Apparently this was the first time that pre-stranding behaviour had been captured on film. The researcher eventually offered to buy four and a half minutes of our tape for $2500, which we gladly accepted.
Just a week later we left Coles Bay after a wonderful year with our mum and Nannie. Shortly after arriving home we decided to invest the $2500 from the sale of the video tape into professional editing for a 25 minute documentary of the adventure. Thus the whale rescue story took on a life of its own. When we finished the documentary I hosted a couple of public viewings, one close to home and one in Washington State. At the viewing in Victoria a prominent sculptor in our community walked up to Penny and me and presented us with a magnificent sculpture of three pilot whales with the words, “This is a gift from the whales”. Of course we were dumb struck, teary eyed and delighted. The sculpture remains one of our most treasured possessions.
Once I commenced duties as a teacher-on-call, I was able to parlay the experience into an all day multimedia unit for senior elementary students. Word of the unit soon spread around the district and I was kept busy working almost full time. To this day, our whale rescue adventure remains one of our family’s most treasured memories.
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