A mindful snorkel with humpback whales in the Dominican Republic

PUERTO PLATA, Dominican Republic - Right on the very first day of our whale safari, guide Jeff drives us to despair. 

Up until now, we were all patiently looking forward to this moment.

Overnight, we sailed from Puerto Plata on the north coast of the Dominican Republic to Silver Bank. We had a long breakfast on board the Sea Hunter. Then, after just a few minutes in the dinghy, a mother whale and her calf appeared. 

Everyone frantically put on flippers and wet suits. Liz, a vet from Kentucky, already had her mask on. 

Then Jeff goes and says, “Before we go into the water, you need an introductory course.”

He radioed the second dinghy so that group already briefed on board can go first. “This is torture,” jokes Dorsey, a biologist from Oregon. 

Jeff reassures us, “We still have a whole week to snorkel with the humpback whales. The important thing is that we know how to behave so that nothing happens to us and the animals are not disturbed.”

There is no danger. Humpback whales would never ram or attack humans, he says. But the curious calves could come very close to us.

Baby heading toward us

Jeff Pantukhoff, experienced whale expert and underwater photographer, has spent years organizing tours to Silver Bank with Gene Flipse, the expedition leader and founder of whale safari provider Conscious Breath Adventures.

The name of the provider refers both to the breathing of the whales and to the motto of mindful awareness. This is paramount when encountering whales.

“To avoid scaring the whales away, we don’t jump into the water, but slowly slide in from the edge of the boat with our fins first,” says Jeff. Other rules include staying close together, not diving down to the whales and not touching them.

In practice, over the next few days, guides Jeff, Gene and Catherine Cushenan, a British marine ecologist, search for the humpback whales.

Mostly they lie half-asleep on the seabed at a depth of about 50 feet and come to the surface to breathe every 15 to 20 minutes. This is the moment when you get up close and personal with these gentle giants.

Finally, our moment arrives. Jeff goes into the water to check the situation. Then he raises his fist, our signal. Floating on the surface of the water, we line up. We gaze mesmerized into the deep blue.

A mother whale remains motionless, while her calf snuggles up to her side. Suddenly, it surfaces in pirouettes to breathe. Apparently, we have aroused the curiosity of the giant baby. It performs an acrobatic turn and heads toward us.

With just a few strokes of its fins, the animal, which is perhaps four months old, is upon us. Fortunately, it makes another turn, otherwise it would have rammed Michael and Sybille Gfall, a German-Austrian couple from Munich. Sonja, a sprightly 84-year-old woman from Hamburg, almost loses her monofin. It seems as if the whale baby is having fun driving us apart. 

Mama whale has had enough

The mother whale seems to have had enough of her little one playing with us adults. She surfaces and pushes her calf away from us. She is huge, perhaps around 46 feet long.

Then both disappear into the depths. “Wow, what was that? Unbelievable!” Sybille screams with joy. “This moment alone made the whole trip worthwhile.”

Such close encounters with the giants of the sea are no exception at Silver Bank. The flat underwater plateau, located about 75 nautical miles north of the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean Sea, is one of the few places in the world where you can snorkel with humpback whales, along with Tonga in the South Pacific, says expedition leader Gene Flipse.

Silver Bank is one of the places where you can see the most humpback whales. Every year between January and April, up to 5,000 whales from across the North Atlantic gather here. “They come from Greenland, Iceland, Newfoundland and Norway to mate, give birth and raise their calves in the warm, sheltered waters,” says Gene.

In 1986, UNESCO declared this 20,000-square-kilometer nursery for humpback whales, which avoid their natural enemies such as orcas and white sharks, a marine mammal sanctuary. 

The name Silver Bank comes from the Spanish galleons and pirate ships that often capsized and lost their treasures here in the rugged world of coral and sandbanks. 

Apart from Conscious Breath Adventures and its Sea Hunter, only two other expedition ships have licenses to conduct whale safaris in the sanctuary.

Bull the size of a plane

The next morning, Jeff rings the ship’s bell at 8:30 am, telling us to get ready. It is windy, the waves are high, meaning not easy conditions. Catherine, our guide today, watches for the fountains that whales spray meters into the air when they breathe. For about 30 minutes, we follow a mother and her calf, accompanied by males. But they don’t linger, constantly changing direction.

Catherine spots a cow and a bull who have stopped resting. They have already been underwater for 12 minutes, so will soon resurface. We position ourselves at the water’s surface. The bull is the size of an airplane.

Then the animals come to the surface right next to us. You can almost touch them, hear them breathing, see their ribbed white bellies, scars from fierce battles and their tiny eyes, though they are actually as big as tennis balls. Fish clean their mouths. They glide majestically past us.

We may spend almost an hour and a half with the whales. We swim after them, but then stop in awe as the bull slaps the water hard with his enormous tail fin, again and again. He wants to impress the female.

“Simply indescribable. It feels like being in a National Geographic documentary,” says Michael Gfall as he climbs back into the boat.

In the evenings, the guides give scientific lectures about the humpback whales, which can grow up to almost 60 feet long and weigh 35 tons. At birth, the calves already measure more than 13 feet, weigh around 1 ton and need more than 20 gallons of their mother’s milk every day.

A show and a sundowner

The next day, the Atlantic is as smooth as glass, but there are no humpback whales to be seen. The Caribbean sun beats down mercilessly, and the crew feeds and hydrates us with watermelon and mango. Jeff and Gene repeatedly lower microphones into the water to track down “singers” of love songs said to be mystical. But we are not lucky today.

However, the sea safari has another grand finale in store for us, a group of young bulls that repeatedly leap high out of the water. “It could be courtship behavior, or they might just be having fun,” says Flipse.

In any case, the close encounter with the humpback whales is an unforgettable natural spectacle, we agree over a sundowner on the upper deck. 

The sun sinks blood-red into the sea. One last time, we watch the giants perform their acrobatic leaps on the horizon, seemingly to give us a fitting farewell.

This story was originally published March 17, 2026 at 10:37 AM.