Playa El Valle is located 100 miles from shoals of the Silver Bank
This sunset is also brought to you by the Dominican Republic. However, this sunset is from El Valle, a small town along the northeastern coast. This was a remote, white-sand, cove-style beach. The beach sits between two mountains, and the beach ends at the shear walls of those adjacent mountains. The lush green jungle starts right at the beach. Water from the mountainside flows off the rocks onto the beach, creating waterfalls. Local kids race their horses down the beach.
Playa El Valle happens to be located about a hundred miles from shoals of the Silver Bank, a popular humpback whale breeding and calving area. Humpbacks from all over migrate to this area in the winter. How did the Silver Bank get its name? This area is relatively shallow compared to the surrounding waters, and on low tide there are actually exposed coral heads. So, this area was a good area to wreck a ship, especially before the days of radar and GPS. This was the fate of the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción in 1641. The Concepción had a lot of silver onboard. So much silver that the “Silver Bank” and “Puerto Plata” (Dominican City) were named after this wreck and its treasure.
There is also another whale hot spot just to the southeast called Navidad Bank. Both Silver Bank and Navidad Bank are under the jurisdiction of the Dominican Republic. The Dominican government recognized the importance of these waters and what they mean for sea mammals, so in 1986 they established the Silver and Navidad Bank Sanctuary. In 1996, they enlarged this area of protection. Just because these animals are “protected” does not mean that you cannot see them. There are a lot of tourism outfits that go to these areas to view the whales and other marine life. Unfortunately for me, I did not have the time to get out to the Silver Bank while down in the Dominican Republic. But to my fortune, the Silver Bank came to me. We were hanging out on the beach, when someone spotted a few humpback whales pretty far off shore. You could see them breaching and blowing water out of their blow holes.
So, I decided to swim out into the cove. I had my dive mask with me, but no other diving equipment. I was breath-hold diving down to the bottom of the cove, and sitting there for as long as I could in silence, trying to listen for whale songs. It didn’t take long. These sounds were so powerful, it was amazing! You could feel the vibrations as you were listening to the song. I was surprised by how loud the vocalizations seemed to be. Even knowing sound travels four times faster in water than in air, it still seemed like the whales were closer than where I saw them before entering the water. After a while, I was exhausted, so I decided to swim back to the beach. As I was getting out of the water, I took off my mask, turned around, and saw this huge humpback whale breach just outside the cove! The whales had come in much closer since I had got into the water. The reason the songs sounded so loud was because the whales were at the entrance of the cove, and the sound was echoing off all the walls of the cove that I was sitting at the bottom of.
Did you know? “Playa” means “beach” and “Valle” means “valley”.
The whales were at the entrance of the cove!
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