The agitated bull elephant with tusks was seemingly leading me and my family to safety away from the sea and a possible tsunami. It was 7.20 a.m, several hours before a tsunami alert was issued at 2.30 p.m. on April 11, 2012 by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. I was on a game drive with my family as guests of Mahoora who operate luxury tented safaris. The Mahoora driver Priyantha and I had never seen anything like this before. The agitated tusker emerged mysteriously from a grassy plain onto the road and solemnly marched in front of the vehicle leading us along Meda Para, away from the low lying Gonalabbe Plain and the sea beyond it. The task completed, it disappeared into the thorn scrub.
We later heard of a leopard with a cub on a tree near the Buttuwa Spill. As we turned into the spill road, on the Buttuwa Plains, not far from the sea, my wife Nirma pointed out two bull elephants. One had its trunk curled in its mouth and an aggressive encounter seemed to be in the making. They were far away and we went unsuccessfully in search of the mother and cub. At 1.10 p.m., the two bull elephants were feeding close to each other amicably.
Looking back, I can ask whether the two bulls had given up their aggression and had been united by a common fear as they had sensed impending danger by picking up seismic tremors using the Paccinian corpuscles; layers of nerves on the soles of their feet. Big cats can also sense ground tremors using the pads on their feet. Had mother and cub fled a potential tsunami? Was the mother old enough to have experienced the 2004 tsunami when the sea swept into the park where low lying areas were next to the sea?
With a touch of imagination, I had two or possibly three story worthy ‘animal tsunami warning’ stories that morning. But I knew that none of them were credible stories of animals sensing an impending tsunami; however, I brought them up to illustrate the dangers of post event associations. The elephant that led us to safety was a bull in musth. I could see it and smell the secretions. Elephants occasionally stride along a road. The two bull elephants seemingly bonded by a common danger were probably still warily sizing each other up. Leopards and their cubs don’t necessarily stay on a tree from morning to evening.
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| A sperm whale in Kalpitiya, where last month’s large sightings were reported |
After the tragic Boxing Day tsunami of December 26, 2004, a story went worldwide that the animals in Yala National Park had escaped the tsunami. In an article in February 2005, I outlined several possible reasons why animals survived and humans perished. I won’t repeat them here but in this article I will discuss briefly two connections made between the seismic tremors off Indonesia which registered a magnitude of 8.6 on April 11 and cetaceans (whales and dolphins) in Sri Lankan waters.
The first relates to an observation by British photographer Andrew Sutton that at 1.15 p.m. Sri Lankan time, all cetaceans vanished. The Guardian, a British newspaper on their website carried a story on April 15, 2012 linking this to the earthquake and in its headline asked the question whether whales can predict tsunamis. At a conceptual level, I am comfortable with the notion that Blue Whales in particular may have picked up long waves emanating from seismic activity. Blue Whales are believed to use long waves to communicate across a few thousand kilometres. Did some seismic activity off Indonesia give rise to whales picking up a danger signal around 1.15 p.m. in Sri Lanka? Perhaps someone can examine the seismic data picked up by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to see if there is any corroboration.
On my part, I enquired to see if anyone else who had been at sea could corroborate this. My first call was to Anoma Alagiyawadu, naturalist of Jetwing Lighthouse who was on his 531st whale watch. He had not noticed anything unusual. But he had come ashore well before 1 p.m. and for the first time he was in a helicopter and not in a boat. I then enquired with A.H. Ruvan Nishantha, the skipper of Mirissa Water Sports, who has even more whale watching sailings. He had come ashore at 12 noon and not observed any unusual behaviour. But as they were not in the water at 1.15 p.m., it does not contradict or support the observation. But it seems that around two hours before the 1.15 p.m. observation, we had two experienced observers one at sea, the other in the air, not detecting any unusual behaviour.
Meanwhile, five minutes before the photographer’s observation, I was observing two elephants close enough to the sea to be at risk from a tsunami, but despite their built-in seismic detectors, showing no sign of panic and not having moved location for an hour. Although I have dwelled on the elephants, after the December 2004 tsunami I could not locate any witnesses who had seen elephants moving rapidly away from the sea before it struck. A study of radio collared elephants by Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando found no evidence of elephants anticipating the tsunami and moving away to safety. Sutton was photographing and not recording data as a researcher and therefore his sightings’ log is a simple list of species numbers seen on a day. He estimated that they were five miles south of Dondra.
The continental shelf is closest to Sri Lanka at Dondra and at this distance the depth would have been sufficient for whales and boats to be safe. The harbour authorities asked the boats in Mirissa to put out to sea to protect them from potential tsunami damage. Skippers such as Ruvan Nishantha took their boats three nautical miles out to sea, a depth shallower than the depth five miles south of Dondra. So why did the whales and dolphins in deeper water evacuate the seas around Dondra?
How did the dolphins which do not use long waves for long distance communication pick this up? How is this mysterious disappearance any different from the seas emptying of whales and dolphins which I experience on almost every whale watching trip? Whether it is cetaceans or leopards, there are intervals with no animals whose timing and length appear to be random. There are no convincing answers at this stage. However, Andrew Sutton has many years of experience with filming and photographing cetaceans. So perhaps this observation should be made note of in case someone else can find conclusive corroborating accounts.
The second whale and seismic connection arose soon after a press release from the Sri Lanka Navy which stated ‘Sri Lanka Navy is pleased to convey the spectacular sighting of sperm whales thronging the scenic Kalpitiya seas. Naval craft attached to SLNS Vijaya of the North-Western Naval Command on routine patrol at 8.30 am on 14th April detected a large number of whales frolicking in multiple pods at a distance of 3 nautical miles west of the Bar Reef’. Subsequently, there were many accounts on TV, print media, social media and this paper, the Sunday Times (Sunday April 22) suggesting a link with the large number of Sperm Whales seen off Kalpitiya and the seismic activity off Indonesia. It will not be easy to prove that there is no link. But I would suggest that this was a coincidence.
On March 7, 2010, the Sunday Times carried an article by me announcing Kalpitiya as a whale watching hot spot and the presence of Sperm Whales, a 15 minutes speed boat ride away from shore. The Hi Magazine of October 2011 carried another article on the Sperm Whales of Kalpitiya in April 2011. In March 2012, Ashan Seneviratne of Little Adventures liaised with several resort owners in Kalpitiya to join me, him and Riaz Cader to search for Sperm Whales for the third consecutive year.
Two days before our scheduled sea searches on April 16 and 17, the Navy came across the large pod of Sperm Whales, estimated at over 100. Maithri Liyanage, the owner of Ruwala Resort independently encountered the Sperm Whales and saw them on four consecutive days. Since the huge awareness created by this encounter of Sperm Whales by several boats, sightings almost on a daily basis continued until the seas turned rough in the last week of April.
The sightings by the Navy and by many boats subsequently have been around the 400m depth isobath. This lies between E 79 35 and E 79 38 but comes closer around Kandakuliya and the Bar Reef. I have since 2010 publicised this as one of the top ten Sperm Whale watching locations in the world and the mere presence of Sperm Whales is not unusual. Neither is this area shallow as has been suggested by some accounts in the print media and social media. As I explained in my article of March 2010, oil and gas exploration off Kalpitiya Peninsula resulted in depth data which showed that close to shore is deep water and that this had not been recorded before, despite a widespread misconception that the British admiralty charts recorded the depth contours accurately.
If the presence of Sperm Whales off Kalpitiya is not unusual, can the large numbers recorded this year be attributed to the seismic activity? I suspect that as Kalpitiya develops into a Sperm Whale watching hot spot, other large pods will be seen. On April 16 and 17, Seneviratne, Cader and I failed to locate the large pod. However, Maithri Liyanage had a pod of 50 and we caught up with 17 of the tail end of this feeding pod who were travelling South, in what I suspect is a north-south alternating feeding sweep. The larger estimates may be true as a larger pod could have split into smaller pods. Sperm Whales are known to congregate in hundreds, even thousands.
According to Chaaya Blu naturalist Dayarathne, between March 7 and 29, 2012, Sperm Whales were seen off Trincomalee and the maximum count on a day was between 200 to 250. When I found them on April 19 and 20, 2012 off Trincomalee, the super pod was no longer present and my maximum count was 20. In Mirissa too, Sperm Whales are regularly seen although pods are usually in the range of 10-30. The presence of Sperm Whales or large numbers of them off Kalpitiya is not necessarily unusual enough to invoke a seismic connection as they have occurred elsewhere off Sri Lanka in large numbers without needing a seismic explanation. But the dynamics of their movements remain a mystery in the absence of good field data.
Much as I would like to believe in whales and elephants foretelling tsunamis, so far I am unable to find conclusive evidence from Sri Lanka from the recent events in April 2012. If it were true, it would be a powerful story. Irrespective of where the truth lies, April 2012 marks a turning point in the consciousness of the average Sri Lankan to the presence of the largest toothed animal in the planet being found off our shores.
Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne can be found on Facebook and Flickr. He publicised Sri Lanka as being Best for Blue and authored the Sri Lankan Wildlife (Bradt) and the Photographic Guide to the Mammals of Sri Lanka (New Holland). |
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