Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne offers compelling evidence why Kalpitiya can be one of Sri Lanka's three whale watching hot spots. This is the story of his quest to verify a theory by British marine scientist Dr. Charles Anderson
Text and Pics by Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne
As I walked to the beach an Indian Nightjar churred. I was sensing the world through my ears. I was in a world of darkness, like the one inhabited by the Sperm Whales. In their world, in the murky depths where no light penetrates, they will 'see' with sound, using echo-location.
Waves gently lapped the shoreline in front of the boat house at the Alankuda Beach Resort. The silent murmur of the sea was abruptly broken by the scream of a powerful out-board engine as we thundered out, hurtling across the reef at 30 kmph to where the continental shelf plunged away into a deep abyss. I was heading in the darkness before day break, in search of the creatures of the darkness of the deep. I had instructed the boatman Susantha to head west, in search of whales and answers to another theory put forward by British marine scientist Dr. Charles Anderson
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