By Tanya Burnett and Kevin Palmer
Few experiences can rival the ineffable impact of being in the water with an air-breathing creature that is about 500 times your size and weight. A cetacean that can look you in the eye and choose to either hang out or glide away has a lasting effect on most people. But where is the best place to go and what is the gear you need?
In the last several years, many travelling photographers have flocked to the famous locations where humpbacks congregate to mate and calf. People want the latest and greatest places that allow snorkelling with whales, often exotic locales like northern Tonga and islands like Moorea in French Polynesia.
The siren’s call of 150’ visibility and a verdant South Pacific backdrop is certainly understandable, but after experiencing many locations around the world and how they operate, we have concluded that the location in our North Atlantic backyard on the Silver Banks, Dominican Republic, probably offers the best humpback whale encounters for most people, most of the time.
The problem with many in-water whale encounter locations is a lack of regulation that leads to an excessive number of boats and people pursuing a limited number of whales. This often generates disappointing encounters as you and forty of your not-so-close friends swim like mad before the whale decides they have had enough. The other factor in these South Pacific locations is just how often the weather is quite snotty during the South Pacific winter which is when the humpbacks show up. These locations can get quite rough and in an effort for boats to find calmer conditions, it usually means giving up that nice visibility.
The Silver Banks, on the other hand, tends to be pretty consistent in its conditions and in the number of people that visit. It is an open ocean environment that can make for a potentially rough crossing, but with a mostly protected anchorage and some additional reef barrier to break some of the wind and swell giving you a calmer sea to work with. Most importantly, the thing that sets the Silver Banks apart is that the Dominican government has restricted access to only 3 permits. That means there are a maximum of three liveaboards on the Bank at any given time with hundreds, and at times thousands, of humpbacks coming and going. It is considered the largest aggregation of whales in the world.
So as photographers and videographers, what are the most important things we can do for greater success when swimming with whales? The thing that most people underestimate is the quality and experience of the guide on your tender.
One of the greatest improvements in experiencing humpback whales in the water over the last 30-plus years is the fact that truly high-quality guides have learned a huge amount about “reading” whale behaviours and personality. When we first went on a humpback whale trip in the mid-1990s, the guide’s experience was iffy at best. Most of our encounters involved leaping in front of oncoming whales in the hopes of getting a passing glimpse of humpbacks lasting mere seconds. This amounted to just a handful of lucky shots after a week of trying.
Today, experienced guides know just the kind of whale behaviour that might provide a good encounter and when the opportunity arises, encounters can run from a minute or two up to an hour or longer with a calm whale. Now a trip can produce dozens or even hundreds of interesting whale photographs for your efforts.
Obviously, equipment plays an important role in an image maker’s success rate, but that does not mean whale photography or video is difficult. It is, in fact, just the opposite. Since it is mostly ambient light imaging near the surface, whale photography is some of the easiest nature photography there is ⎯ even for beginners. We have seen guests shooting their smartphones in a $200 waterproof housing produce some awesome whale footage.
Olympus TG-6 shooters with a wide-angle wet lens shooting in the program can do pretty great (a little negative exposure compensation helps). And of course, modern DSLR and mirrorless cameras, when set up correctly, can produce the kind of spectacular results we expect of them.
For those looking for the best lens for their interchangeable lens camera, we usually find this will be somewhat dependent on the type of person and swimmer you are. If you tend to hang back a little and are a bit uncomfortable getting too close, you might want a lens that has about a 95-to-105-degree angle of coverage. This would be about a 16-18mm lens on a full-frame camera or a 10-12mm lens on an APS-C camera. That should give you some reach to frame a very large subject.
If you tend to be a little closer to the action, the newer range of water contact optics that have come out in recent years that can offer up to 130 or 140 degrees of coverage is a great solution and one of my favourite options for whales. Less water between you and the subject makes for sharper results if the whale is very cooperative, and the optics also have some distortion correction built in. Some people have great success with fisheye lenses (up to 180-degree diagonal FOV), but the biggest challenge with shooting these is the amount of distortion right at the surface of the water which tends to make the ocean’s surface appear quite curved.
One trick to help with this is to learn to shoot the fisheye while holding the camera down near your waist which can reduce the surface distortion a bit. Another option is to wear a weight belt balanced so that while floating at the surface, one can exhale and just sink a foot or two below sea level to reduce the distortion while still looking through the viewfinder or monitor. Both techniques are good habits when seas get a bit choppy as well to avoid micro-bubbles at the surface.
The biggest challenges are often the ones that can’t generally be controlled. Of course, first off are the whales themselves. That is where the guides come in and can hopefully find the cooperative and relaxed ones over the course of the day. Secondly is the understanding that swimmers are generally dropped downwind of the whale. This is so snorkelers on the surface will not be inadvertently blown into the whale – which would probably be a bad situation. But that also means that you can’t always control which direction the sun is shining in relation to the whale. So, you may well have to shoot towards the sun sometimes, which is less than ideal. Your best hope in that situation is to try to make the most of a somewhat silhouetted whale, perhaps shooting high shutter speeds to capture some crispy sun rays while waiting for a better position.
Just because you are on a quest to find personable whales on the daily tender expeditions, it doesn’t mean there is not plenty of activity going on at the surface. On the Silver Banks, lots of impressive breaching, tail lobs, and “spy-hops” are commonly seen – often at a distance, but occasional breaches very close to the vessel are breathtaking in their power and mass.
Having a surface camera or the ability to shoot your housed camera topside is a must for these daily adventures. Another often spectacular behaviour to witness is a whale “heat run”. This is when anywhere from a few males to over a dozen are in pursuit of a single female who may or may not have an escort. These can be quite aggressive (towards each other, not towards the boats) and involve the wild activity of males trying to outdo each other, who frequently launch out of the water. You definitely do not want to be in the water with this fast-moving crowd of rowdies, but depending on your tender, you can sometimes hold your camera over the side and beneath the water as the tender runs beside the group to capture what can be many whales in a single shot. Serious photographers would do well to consider bringing a pole cam for such a purpose as holding a rig beneath the surface with a rapidly moving tender will make you feel like you just spent a few hours at the gym!
Snorkelling with these magnificent whales is well worth being on most folk’s bucket lists. And doing it more than once always brings new surprises and experiences. After 30 years of photographing humpbacks, it has stayed just as exciting as the first time, but the quality of the experience has improved immensely. Not to mention, if you share your photos with the right research groups, you can contribute to the greater body of knowledge about some amazing creatures we share our planet with.
About The Author
Tanya G Burnett and Kevin Palmer are an adventurous duo whose shared passion for nature, oceans, and exotic cultures has forged a dynamic creative partnership. With over three decades of diving and photography experience, Tanya brings a unique perspective to their collaborations, having ventured into some of the most remote locations and graced the pages of prestigious publications worldwide. Kevin, a professional diver and photographer for over 25 years, complements Tanya’s skills with his natural writing talent, weaving captivating narratives that accompany their stunning visual imagery. Together since 2000, they have curated an impressive portfolio of published magazine covers, articles, and fine art giclees, captivating audiences with their vivid portrayals of the natural world exploration and storytelling. Please visit their website here https://www.islandexposure.us/.Contact: info@islandexposure.us Instagram: @island.exposure
This piece was prepared online by Panuruji Kenta, Publisher, SEVENSEAS Media