22 Apr 2003
Nobody said it was going to be easy

Nobody said it was going to be easy. They did say however that the Cape Verde Islands are a remote and harsh environment. The trade winds blow constantly, sometimes honking, creating mountainous seas and huge swells. There is little or no support facilities on the islands, dysentery is widespread and it hasn’t rained on some of them for over 10 years. Nice !
So we decided to sail a yacht, from Ireland, south to Portugal, then onto the Canary Islands before the final stretch to the Cape Verde. A journey of over 4500 km. Once there we were going to survey the islands for humpback whales ! Visiting sites they have been recorded in recent years and those areas where the Yankee whalers caught them in there hundreds in the mid 19th Century. We would be only the fourth research group over the last 20 years to try and work on humpbacks in this island archipelago. Why so few have been down here and why did we think we could succeed in this unforgiving environment.

If it was easy to work on humpback whales in the Cape Verde then people would have been here often and our knowledge of their status and distribution as well as migration routes etc would be well known. However it is precisely this reason why we wanted to try, to contribute to the knowledge of whales in Cape Verde and try and establish a link with Irish humpback whales. We might get lucky ! and we will certainly achieve more than just talking about it back home in Ireland.

When we sailed into Boavista on our first day of the survey and sailed right into about a dozen humpback whales, singing away in a sympathetic sea, I stated that I didn’t think it was going to be this easy. Over the next two days we made numerous recordings of humpback songs, took at least four good fluke shots for photo-identification and had a close encounter with a female and her young calf. We were all very pleased.

On our return to Boavista from Sao Vicente a week later we were full of optimism for what we could achieve. Our ambitions were soon brought into check and over the next seven days we only had three sightings of humpbacks whales for a total time of about 20 seconds ! We spent two days on anchor in Sal Rei harbour unable to row the 100m to the pier due the huge swell throwing us about like a cork in a stormy sea and when we were at sea we were usually hanging on, restricted to the cock pit, rather than up on the bow scouring the horizon for whale blows or splashes. Thankfully the “Anna M” is a very fine ocean yacht, who loyally took us to every corner we asked her to, over waves and down troughs with Cape Verde Shearwaters, Storm Petrels and Red-billed Tropicbirds her only company.

Over the last three weeks we have suffered a broken engine, torn sail, some opportunistic locals, numerous soakings and even ran out of Barry teaba's. None of these obstacles have deterred us and every day we have all risen early and set sail once again in search of humpbacks whales. If it wasn’t for the determination of Joe Aston to sail to the Cape Verde Islands and the encouragement of Tony Whelan to make it happen this expedition would have got no further than a good idea and fine talk. Despite the harsh environment we have been won over by the warmth and beauty of the Cape Verde people who have .

Only by taking up new challenges and pushing ourselves to new limits can we develop as individuals and try and make a useful contribution to our understanding of the world around us. This marks the end of the Cape Verde work, Joe will soon start the long journey back to Ireland and we will continue this summer to look for humpback whales off the Irish coast. Maybe we will observe one of the whales we have spent the last three weeks with in the Cape Verde Islands, maybe we won’t.

And are the humpbacks in the Cape Verde still singing Port na bPucai ? Well, we will let you work that one out.

Simon Berrow