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With surprising speed the whale surfaces and, sensing the presence of Why Ask , sounds again-just beyond the reach of Athneal Ollivierre' s harpoon.
" Blows! She blows!" someone yelled. To my surpri se, the men did not hurry for the boats. The spouts were hardly visible to me , but the men kept track of the time and number of " bumps" the whale made . " We have to see in which direction the whale is heading, " Athneal said. The whale surfaced agai n, head ing south towards the is land of Canoan. With sails hoisted quickly , Why Ask and Dart headed out of Mustique with a gentle wi nd blowing due east. It had been approximately twenty minutes since the last sighting and the whalers expected to see the whale spout any minute . (I was told that a whale can sound anywhere between ten and thirty minutes depending on its size .) For me , whose object was to document the whale hunt on fi lm, the seconds intensified as though I had stepped into a time warp , an indefinable dimension of time and space where the past, present and future become abstractl y fu sed into '' the moment. '' Whatever was about to happen could never be reduplicated and I had only one chance with twenty frames left on my camera. The boat pitched and rolled heavily as the seconds became minutes, and the minutes seemed to drag on for hours. Except for the occasional sound of the sails luffing, it was quiet. " Blows! She blows! " one of the whalers shouted. The mist of the spouts could be seen clearly , about 300 yards east. We executed a series of brisk tacks and sailed close hauled to the vicinity of the whale-but the whale had sounded. " The tide is heading east," Athneal commented . We tacked again and sailed to a point several miles northeast of Canoan . The luffing sails of Dart could be seen far to the west and it appeared that harpooner Lionel Durham had picked the spot where he thought the whale would surface next. Meanwhile , Athneal kept his course steady as the tense process of waiting and watching started once again . As the drama of life and death unfolded, I began to notice a mounting anxiety, a predatory in stinct, in the weather-beaten faces of the whalemen . With the hard look of concentration, commands were given and the hierarchy of the chase was reaffi rmed . Harry, the tub oarsman , pointed out the danger of touching the neatly arranged lines. If a snag developed while
46
the line was running out, it could jam in the block and actually drag the boat under with the diving whale. Being forced to stay put quietly behind two agitated whalers in a boat in constant motion , while the bli stering hot sun played behind the massive tropical clouds , conditions were less than favorab le for me as a lensman . " Over there! " yelled Ephriam, pointing to a whale as it spouted. " Okay . Let's go!" Athneal ordered, deftly balancing himself on the chocks in a striking pos iti on. Blowing a fine mist of water more than a dozen feet into the air, the whale bumped again abo ut 100 years off the port quarter. It appeared to be a young bull and, with its limited field of vision, he was still un aware of our presence . A favorab le wind let our helmsman, Don , maneuver the boat with amazing speed to the left fla nk of the whale . The whale bumped again, and I began photographing-constantly wi nding and foc using, trying to keep the whale in the view of my 400mm lens. The next event occurred so fast that I was not sure whether the whale was coming or going , but it definitely had spotted us approac hing. The whale dove smartly and before I knew it , the boat was right above him . " Too late!" one of the men muttered . Athneal lunged the harpoon into the de pth s of the rushing water, but the whal e had di sappeared as Why Ask sped over the whale 's foaming , descendin g wake . The chase was done.
* * * * * A strong sense of relief overcame me as I felt my anxiety and tension answered : the whale was alive, free and running. I thought about Athneal' s expert judgment and the seamanship of the whalers. Even more , I was moved by what had allowed the moment to occur, where their will was synchronized for an instant with the uncontrollable elements of nature. For the whalers, it was another day of fruitless endeavor-among the last days of a century-old livelihood that must pass with them . w
John Olsson studied photogra0hy under Alfred Loesch in Puerto Rico and at the Roches lier In stitute of Technology. He currently works as a color-lalb technician when not photographing in the Caribbean. SEM HISTORY , SUMMER 1986