This is the thing! Blue Whale are Incredibly Enormous!

A story from Asha DeVos, PhD.

Blue whale in the foreground with two humpbacks in the background

Founder of Oceanswell, Asha is Sri Lanka’s foremost blue whale researcher. But seeing a blue whale in Monterey Bay was anything but routine for Asha. Her enthusiasm for her study subjects is simply contagious and Asha astounds her fellow whale watchers.

ASHA DE VOS is a Sri Lankan blue whale researcher and the founder of Oceanswell, Sri Lanka’s first marine conservation, research, and education organization. She was born in the island nation of Sri Lanka and grew up there. Unable to study marine biology in her home country, Asha left to study at St. Andrews University in Scotland, where she did her undergraduate work. She then got her masters at the University of Oxford in England, followed by getting her PhD at the University of Western Australia. Asha conducted her post-doc work at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC), which brought her to the Monterey Bay area in 2013.

Asha wanted to be an adventure scientist from the time she was six. Her parents gave her National Geographic magazines, which became her motivation to explore and adventure and seek out things that no one else had seen. Plus, Asha visualized herself in the magazine, a feat she has now accomplished!

Also while a child, she started swimming and developed a growing passion for the ocean. At the age of 18 she decided she was going to do marine biology as her degree. Asha followed through, leaving Sri Lanka and engaging in her academic studies around the world.

After her extensive theoretical studies, she set out to get some fieldwork experience. Asha took off to New Zealand where she lived in a tent for six months and was involved in a variety of projects including working with Hector’s dolphins and freshwater eels.

Asha then had the opportunity to get on a whale research vessel that was circumnavigating the globe. She got on board in the Maldives, and one day, while tracking sperm whales off the coast of Sri Lanka, Asha saw a very powerful, tall blow in the distance, clearly not a sperm whale. She got quite excited because she knew that was a blue whale.

The boat moved towards the blue whale, which turned out to be an aggregation of blue whales. She expected to see them mating, which is what one usually sees in warm waters, but that was not the case here. Instead of mating and babies, Asha saw whale poop, and it was that bright red blue whale poop that started her on the trajectory of a blue whale career.

Asha realized that these whales had not read the same textbooks she had, which all said that baleen whales migrate from cold water feeding areas to warm water breeding/calving grounds. Rather the Sri Lankan blues were feeding in the warm tropical waters five degrees above the equator. This anomaly led Asha to pursue the answers to so many questions that arose regarding the uncharacteristic behavior of this population of whales.

After completing her post-doc work at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Asha returned to Sri Lanka where she has launched her own non-profit called Oceanswell. Asha feels it is important to empower Sri Lankans with a local ‘small but mighty’, yet global voice. She wants people to realize it does not matter where you are, but you can be a powerful force for the oceans. Oceanswell’s focus is on the next generation of ocean heroes, particularly diverse ocean heroes, including those from under-represented nations who will conduct marine conservation research, and also engage others in conversations and story telling about the magic of the world’s oceans.

Asha sees training citizens of her own country as essential to creating opportunities for the young people who will be able to carry on the work when she is gone. Asha visualizes creating an army of engaged, educated people to protect the oceans. She feels an obligation and responsibility to let people learn with her and join her on the adventure to create a collective voice, which can drive the change that we need for ocean and marine protection.

You can watch Asha’s story on Youtube here: https://youtu.be/UlBAl4XyicU

THIS IS THE THING! Blue Whales are incredibly enormous!

I had so many memorable experiences in the short time I was in the Monterey Bay area, I just think it’s hard to not have memorable experiences there, cause it’s a very special place. But I would say for me the most exciting moment was when I was out on a whale watch boat, and we were surrounded by all these humpback whales. It was incredible, right? And, of course, I’m standing on the boat like super excited, and the people, the tourists were like, “Have you ever? You’ve never seen a whale before, is this your first one?” And I’m like, “No, no, no this is what I do for a living!” And the people are like, “Interesting.”

But you know, to me, of course, it’s always an incredible moment where you have all these whales and you’re trying to figure out what the heck is going on, what are they doing under the water - all these questions that start popping up in your mind. So, I, of course - being an easily excitable person, make it quite easy to, you know - to have this explosive moment!

But I think the most interesting encounter was this: We’re watching these whales, and it’s exciting, and people are super stoked, right? Cause, they’re saying, “Wow! Humpback whales! This is really amazing,” and they’re exclaiming how beautiful they are. And then on to the other side of the boat popped up a blue whale.

I work with blue whales. I’ve seen blue whales.  Still, of course, I got excited. It was my first blue whale in Monterey Bay, and I was looking at it and thinking, “Wow, it’s amazing,” Right? And for once I had like the sense of scale, because I have this blue whale, and then I’m seeing the humpbacks. I’ve seen these species separately, but here they were essentially together. And then it was super interesting, because some of the people on the boat turned round, and a humpback whale popped up right next to the blue whale, and the people said, “Look, there’s a dolphin there!!”

And to me, I just turned around and said, “THIS IS THE THING! Blue whales are incredibly enormous! And they throw you off completely!” And that perspective, that to me was so special, because I sit on small boats with these giant whales all the time, and I get that sense of perspective. But to see how huge and majestic, and dominant they are in terms of their size in relation to the other large species in the ocean was a really, really special moment to me.