Sylvain's Panama Adventure » Fauna

Whale Watching in the Pearl Islands

sduford — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 17:47:37 +0000

This week my wife and I went whale watching with 3 other couples in the Pearl Islands. This was almost a last minute thing as we were invited to replace another couple that couldn’t make it. Well, it turned out to be one of those unique life-altering experiences. Everybody should have this on their bucket list!

Our guide was Anne Gordon, a well known animal trainer that has done work for TV series and movies in the past. She now lives in Panama where she has married an Embera Indian and organizes tours of an Embera village. She recently started doing whale and dolphin watching tours as well. You can find out more here and here. While I don’t for one minute believe her “spiritual” stuff, or that she communicates with the whales or worse, that she can heal people over the phone by channeling ”Dolphin Energy”, Anne is nonetheless a remarkable woman that has deep knowledge and respect for the animals, especially the whales. At our request, she respectfully kept all of that “woo woo” stuff out of our trip, so don’t let her website scare you away (I nearly cancelled after reading her website).

Anne organized the whole trip including the plane tickets, the lodging, a fishing afternoon and the whole day on the catamaran with Capt. Pascal. So this was a pleasant and worry free trip. If I was to do it again though I might elect to take the 1.5 hour ferry ride to the islands. While Air Panama only takes 20 minutes to get there, you need to arrive 1 hour ahead of time and we had 2 hour delays both ways. On the ferry you might actually get to see whales on the way there too!

Our first afternoon a group of three went fishing and caught 3 large dorados (mahi mahi) and 6 mackerels. These were dropped at two different restaurants on the island (Romantica and Gerald’s) where they were cooked for us for our two dinners on the island. All 9 of us slept in the comfy Contadora Island Inn B&B.

The second day we boarded the 44′ catamaran at 9:30 ( I think we should have gone out at 8 am since we were all ready, but it was what it was). The boat is very modern, roomy, stable and comfortable. Capt Pascal is a very nice guy and he cooked us a nice lunch too. The only disadvantage of the catamaran is that it is very slow so you can’t rapidly get to the whales when you spot them. But other than that, it was the ideal platform to spend a day on the sea looking for whales while respecting their space.

Things augured well when Pascal told us he was awaken by a couple of whales that came right up to his boat in the bay where he was anchored. Only a few minutes after leaving Contadora island, we spotted a smaller boat surrounded by a group of whales so we immediately aimed for them and it took us maybe 15 minutes to get there.

We were first greeted by spotted dolphins as there was a large group of them playing with the humpbacks. They swam right in front of our boat and they were very playful as you would expect.

Shortly thereafter the first humpback came to check us out. Turns out there were 4 adult whales and one calf. This group of whales and dolphins stayed with us for nearly two hours. They were really curious and would pass extremely close to the front of the boat where we were all standing. They were clearly checking us out. On a couple of occasions they even went right under the boat (see the video below).

We had talked to Anne about swimming with the whales and she said she wanted to check what kind of mood they were in first. She was ready to guide us in the water at some point but there were two other small boats in the area and she safely decided to wait for them to leave. By the time we finally got in the water, the whales had decided to move on. We followed them for a while but they clearly didn’t want to play with us anymore.

After lunch we went to “Survivor island” beach to collect some shells and see what the Survivors were up to, but we were not allowed to get anywhere near them. After snorkeling a bit in these beautiful warm waters, we headed back out to look for more whales. While we could see groups of whales on the horizon in nearly all directions we never managed to get close to any of them again. We gave up late afternoon and started heading back to Contadora when all of a sudden one lone whale popped out of nowhere right next to the boat as if to say goodbye, and then dove back down and went on her way.

This was a fantastic trip and our close encounter with the whales exceeded everyone’s expectations and we all came away thrilled. We felt very privileged that these huge but graceful and magnificent animals came right up to us and shared a few intimate moments with our group. The only disappointment for me was missing out on swimming with these gentle giants.

This was an awe-inspiring and spine-tingling experience and I can certainly see why the more “spiritually-inclined” people interpret this as a spiritual experience and invoke notions of “energy” and other bogus pseudo-scientific concepts. But in reality it is just a highly emotionally charged encounter that kicks our brain into releasing adrenaline and endorphins and the storm of emotions that goes with them.

While you and I will never agree on this point Anne, I nonetheless thank you for your kindness, for your deep respect for the whales and for making this experience of a lifetime possible for us.

Highly recommended!

See the complete photo album here.

Two-Toed Sloth

sduford — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:44:34 +0000

Yesterday was a good day for wildlife sighting! About an hour after I saw the toucan, I went to walk the dog and noticed something hanging from the lowest branch of a tree. At first I thought it was a nest, but as I got closer I saw the nest had a face, it was a young tow-toed sloth! I ran back home to get my big camera and got plenty of shots. He was so close I could almost touch him.

Bambi is growing up so fast!

sduford — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 12:19:13 +0000

He was back for breakfast this morning, I managed to get several shots before the cats scared him away.

Breakfast with Bambi

sduford — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 12:55:58 +0000

I had breakfast with Bambi this morning!

Young Deer

sduford — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 13:35:41 +0000

This young deer came to graze in our garden yesterday morning.

I like boobies

sduford — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 20:53:19 +0000

We went to Isla Contadora in the Pearl Islands last week, hoping to see some humpback whales and dolphins. We unfortunately got rained-out, but on the way back we saw these 12 boobies resting on a floating log. We thought they were all the more common yellow-footed boobies, but on closer examination, one of them was a blue-footed booby, trying to blend in!

12 boobies on a log

Blue-footed Booby

Toucan in flight

sduford — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 14:32:02 +0000

Toucan in flight

Our resident pair of toucans flew by the house this morning and I just barely had enough time to lift the camera and shoot. Not the best picture, but the bird makes up for it.

We see these toucans every day now!

Birds of Panama Photo-Gallery

sduford — Wed, 12 May 2010 13:11:14 +0000

This guy managed to see 219 different bird species and photograph 70 of them during a 4 day trip to Panama. Awesome!

The following gallery is of over 70 bird species I photographed on a short trip to Panama courtesy of Raul Arias de Para who invited me to stay at the wonderful Canopy Tower, on April 17 and April 18, the morning of April 21, and the Canopy Lodge, April 19 and April 20 (dates are linked to the blogs I wrote on the day).

Taxonomy follows Carlos Bethancourt’s “The Canopy Tower and Canopy Lodge Checklist” (a must-have on trips like this) which is based primarily on the “Seventh Edition of the American Ornithologists Union’s ‘Checklist of the birds of North America 1998′ ” (including revisions up to and including the 48th Supplement in 2007)

In total 219 species were seen well enough to be identified (the full trip list is here), either by myself or – more usually – by the guides (who are world-class) and then seen by myself. I photographed over a third of them (some better than others it has to be said!), and I’ll be adding more images below as I get a chance to format them. Conditions in forests are notoriously difficult to work with, but a good number of species gave reasonable views after some encouragement from the guides via recordings, and many of the birds around both the Canopy Tower and Canopy Lodge are habituated to people. It’s perhaps interesting to note that in less than sixty hours of birding I photographed all six species of Panama’s trogons, eight hummingbirds, three species of wrens, and a number of tanagers (inc Euphonias) and antbirds.

via Birds of Panama Photo-Gallery.

Paradise Gardens

sduford — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:16:55 +0000

Next time you are in Chiriqui, you should check out Paradise Gardens near Boquete. It is well worth a visit and they are doing a wonderful job rescuing animals in need.

Sitting on the slopes of Volcan Baru, a sleeping volcano and overlooking the flower garden that is Boquete, Paradise Gardens provides a sanctuary for those wishing peace, quiet and to experience some of the local nature.

Paradise Gardens features as a unique Wildlife Rescue Centre which is set within 4 acres of splendidly landscaped gardens. Started back in 2005 by Paul and Jenny Saban from England, the gardens and inhabitants have evolved in to one of the ‘must see destinations’ in the whole of Chiriquí Province.

via Welcome to Paradise Gardens!.

More Blue-crowned Mot Mot

sduford — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 22:48:11 +0000

Since this bird shows up at dusk, I have limited light to work with and I had to use high ISO settings (up to 5600). Thankfully, my Nikon D700 performs really well at such high ISO settings.