Whale Watching in the Azores by Rob Penn

As the German lady in front of me leant overboard and placed the second half of her continental breakfast into the deep blue, I began to feel the colour in my own cheeks go. I had been warned. Gil Brum Avila, a wizened old whaler, had told me to put “gravel in my stomach”, but rocking gently on the cobalt blue sea in the sunshine is a more potent emetic than you might think. Then a husky voice crackled on the radio, and we were off skimming across the ocean like a flat stone, with salty air tousling our hair, cameras poised, on our way to meet a mighty sperm whale.

The bizarre thing is that only twelve years ago, going ‘whaling’ in the deep Atlantic waters off the Azores would have had us reaching for harpoons rather than cameras. For these rocky islands were the last home of open-boat whale hunting - the pursuit of leviathans from the deep made famous by Herman Melville’s epic, Moby Dick.

The story of the transformation - from bloody, primeval business to benign, leisure activity - is one that will gladden the hearts of conservationists everywhere. This turn around in the fate of the whales is largely due to the good work of one man - Serge Vialelle, the French boss of the Azores’ first whale-watching company ‘Espaco Talassa’. “They were still hunting whales when I arrived on the island of Pico 12 years ago,” he told me. “Economically, whaling had collapsed as a commercial enterprise in the 1960’s. But socially, it was still important when I came here. In many ways, it still is. This village is full of old whalers.”

True enough. I only had to walk ten paces from Serge’s office to encounter Gil. He was the skipper of a whaling boat for 46 years and as well as his invaluable hints on how to hold on to your breakfast, he has enough stories to last as long as, well, as long as a 50 tonne sperm whale would keep you in lamp oil and blubber.

The old whalers like Gil and the ‘vigias’ or lookouts (who spot and identify the whales up to 20 miles out) are an integral part of the attraction of whale-watching in the Azores. To tell the truth, watching the whales is not terribly thrilling, though it is increasingly popular around the world. You see a dorsal fin or two, spouts of water, an elegant fluke and a pale-faced German lady. But add to this, Gil’s epic stories (and yes, there is one about a man who fell into a whale’s gaping mouth) and other vestiges of this highly romanticised way of life, and you have an enthralling place.

The ‘Baloeiros’ or Whaler’s museum is housed in an old boathouse by the quay in Lajes. It tells the story of how these hardy islanders hunted. There is a restored boat, harpoons, bone collections and examples of scrimshaw - the handicraft that used ivory whale teeth. Above the village at the lookout post on a high promontory, you can while away a sunny afternoon with Joao, the vigia, as he scans 180 degrees of ocean - a blank tablet to my eye and a blue plateau of endless minuscule signs of crustacean activity to his.

During the summer months - when the whales are easier to spot and the seas ought to be calmer - a few thousand tourists come to the volcano topped island of Pico. Out of the 80 species of cetaceans in the world, about 25 exist in the Azores. The great advantage Pico has is that the ocean is 1,000m deep, three miles out. On other Azorean islands, you may have to go 15 miles out - a long way when the sea is rough. Also, there are plenty of whales to see - out of 700 boat trips Serge ran in the summer of 1999, only two were out of luck. In a four-hour trip, I saw Sei whales, a sperm whale (the breed that were hunted), a hammerhead shark and dolphins. If you are inclined to go whale-watching anywhere, this is the place to do it. Just remember to skip breakfast.