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Mike Fay’s exploration of Gabon’s untouched wilderness led to 11% of the country being named national park land. This inspired Enric Sala to explore and help protect similarly pristine areas of the ocean around the world. Now the two explorers go back to the beginning to explore the murky waters off the coast of this African nation.
We continue our dives under the rigs. Amazing amounts of fish. Today we decided to film the last of the humpback whales on their way south. There are a few thousand humpbacks that come up from Antarctica every year to breed off the coast of Gabon. Usually they are gone by now but we are discovering that there are still hundreds around. Lots of them are females that have babies and so they are probably slow. We saw a baby today–it was tiny. Crazy to see all these giant whales making their way through the network of oil wells.
We saw whales several times but these guys are all swimming fast south at this point. I got one picture of one tail.
Now we are heading south too, to dive the rock off the border between Gabon and Congo.
A humpback's enormous tail flukes rise above the horizon. Photo by J. Michael Fay.
