Transcript
Dave Bricker (00:03)
Want to expand your speaking and storytelling skills and grow your influence business? This is Speakipedia Media brought to you by speakipedia .com. I’m your host, Dave Bricker, bringing you straight talk, smart strategies, and amazing stories from visionary speakers and thought leaders. My guest has had a lifelong interest in the sea. For most of his professional life, he’s been a dive boat captain and a dive master.
and for the past 17 years he’s been involved with a very special aspect of the underwater industry. Every year between January and April, he takes a total of 200 lucky guests to enjoy the magic experience of swimming with humpback whales in the wild. Please welcome the founder of Conscious Breath Adventures, Captain Gene Flipse.
Gene Flipse (00:53)
Hi Dave, thank you very much for having me and it’s a pleasure to be on your show.
Dave Bricker (00:57)
Thanks Gene, You take your guests into the water to swim with the whales. Where does this happen?
Gene Flipse (01:05)
The area where we operate is in the Dominican Republic. So technically it’s in the southwestern North Atlantic Ocean, just to the north of the Caribbean there, the large island Hispaniola, where the Dominican Republic is located. There’s a series of banks or submerged plateaus. One of them is known as the Silver Bank. It’s part of the Dominican Republic’s park system there. And so…
We operate under a permit to take people out to do this very specialized eco tour activity north of the Dominican Republic on the Silver Bank.
Dave Bricker (01:40)
and how did you get into this particular line of work,
Gene Flipse (01:43)
depends how far back you want to go with the story. It’s a long story, but the short version is that I grew up in South Florida. My parents were outdoorsmen here. They loved boating and fishing, especially being outside. And of course I was raised up with that kind of exposure to the environment and everything like that.
carrying on all through college, engaged in water activities, recreationally, a lot of fun. And then after college, I ended up getting a captain’s license and then worked on private yachts for several years before one of my best friends started a live aboard dive boat operation, taking groups of people over to the Bahamas to go scuba diving and swim with dolphins and go cave diving and do all sorts of really amazing stuff.
All of that’s a very long story. But one of the things we got to do was travel down to the Dominican Republic in support of a National Geographic film shoot on the Silver Bank. And that was the first time that I had ever heard of the place or knew that whales were available in such abundance, relatively close. I, growing up in Florida, had seen whales maybe three or four times in 25 or 30 years of being on the water. And then here was a place where you’d see 25 or 30 whales in the course of an afternoon.
And it was quite a revelation. So the long story short, I enjoy being on the water and working on the water and one thing led to another. And I had the opportunity to go down there on the one boat, the Ocean Explorer. And then an opportunity came up for me to start Conscious Breath Adventures. And it’s such a special experience being down there with the whales that I couldn’t think of anything.
I couldn’t think of missing the opportunity or not being around the whales and here was a chance for me to make sure that I could continue to do that into the future. And so that’s when I started Conscious Breath Adventures and how I got there. It’s a long winding path, but it led to the right destination. And then as to the question… go ahead.
Dave Bricker (03:47)
And it sounds…
It sounds like you were following your calling. So that’s a great story right there. How many of us failed to do that?
Gene Flipse (03:58)
Following my own calling or going with the flow, things seemed to lead me where they went. I didn’t have any grand ambition at the time that this was something that I wanted to do where I was driven to pursue this kind of thing. But opportunities came along and past experiences provided me the foundation to build on. And one thing led to another. And I can’t say that it happened without effort.
But it did seem to come to me more than me pursuing the opportunity. And when the opportunity was there, I realized that all the pieces fit quite nicely. And I went for it. It was a big change of direction for me. Prior to that, I had been captaining dive boats for years and private boats for years, loved running boats, never had much interest in being a businessman per se. And then I switched track when I started Conscious Breath Adventures and now
There’s a lot of business work involved, which is not a natural fit for me, but it was part of the opportunity. And I knew that if I wanted to be with the whales, then this was the way for me to ensure that I could do that.
Dave Bricker (05:09)
Great. And then why Conscious Breath Adventures? What’s in a name?
Gene Flipse (05:15)
There’s a lot in the name, actually, and I had a hard time trying to decide what am I going to call this operation that I had in mind, what am I going to do? So there’s an immediate explanation and then there’s a much deeper, more impactful explanation. Conscious -breath adventures. Well, where does that come from? Well, marine mammals, and particularly cetaceans, which are all whales, dolphins, and porpoises, are all conscious breathers.
So you and I, our dogs, our cats, horses, most terrestrial mammals are unconscious breathers. We can go to sleep, which is a state of unconsciousness, and automatically continue to breathe and wake up alive the next morning. But cetaceans are conscious breathers. They have to think about each breath that they take. They have to think, it’s time for me to go up to the surface and take a breath of air. So it’s not automatic. It’s a conscious behavior.
So conscious breath adventures implies that I run adventures, ecotours that focus on conscious breathers, cetaceans, which is true. And right now it’s focused on humpback whales, but I’ve worked with dolphins in the Bahamas and other animals in different places, other cetaceans. But right now it’s the humpback whale. So conscious breath adventures implies that I do tours that focus on conscious breathers, the cetaceans. But the secondary meaning,
to me has much greater impact and is much more personable. So looking at the definition of each word individually, consciousness is another word for awareness. And it’s my hope and very common that the guests that come out with us are conscious and aware people, environmentally, locally, globally, just conscious and aware people. And then breath is another word for
inspire so when you take a breath of air you’ve inspired a lungful of life -giving oxygen and then an adventure is the experience that people have on the Silver bank with the whales and it’s just a thrilling and exciting experience and there’s this little hook to it people come out and they have this thrilling and exciting experience and they’re already relatively conscious people or they probably wouldn’t be doing this kind of trip
but they come out there and they have this very impactful interaction with these animals, huge adventure, and that inspires them to be even more conscious and aware individuals. And so we provide an environmental lesson to them and information to take home with them. so, know, conscious breath adventures is adventures that inspire consciousness. And so that’s sort of the double layered meaning to the name, which I really, really like. It just came to me one day and I knew it was a great fit for what
what we were trying to do.
Dave Bricker (08:06)
and hence your presence on a storytelling podcast. So, Gene, I’ve heard people who object to this. say, look, we hunted whales for centuries. It’s time that we leave them alone. You should not be swimming with whales. You’re harassing them. So what is a soft in water encounter and how does this approach address those concerns?
Gene Flipse (08:09)
Hahaha
I understand where a lot of the concern comes from because honestly there’s a lot of places in the world where swimming with cetaceans, whales, dolphins, porpoises, is not done in a respectful or ethical way with regards to the animals themselves. It is a problem. It’s a very common, unfortunately a very common kind of situation. So there’s a combination of different things that goes on.
First of all, in the Dominican Republic where we operate, there’s some good geography and some good regulation. The area where we operate is 75 miles offshore. And so it’s not a place where the average weekend warrior type of person can easily get to. So that cuts out that potential conflict, that sort of homegrown challenge there, people just going out not knowing what they’re doing. The simple, ignorant group of folks that
just are gonna do whatever they think they can get away with. And because of the geography, it takes a fairly serious vessel to get out there. And the Dominican Republic, now we operate under a special permit from the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources. And they limit the number of permits to operate out there. It’s a very small number. Conscious Breath Adventures holds one of those permits. They limit the number of boats that can be out there, the number of guests per boat, all of these things.
cuts the numbers down in the first place. So that’s good geography, good regulation helps. But then part of their regulations too is how the approaches and how the interactions happen. And also what just works for this experience. So for example, in the worst case scenario, you can have the case where somebody just zooms up in a zodiac or a skiff or whatever and there’s a whale and they just zoom up and just jump out on top of its head and off it goes. And all they’re gonna see is the tail end of a whale swimming away.
And that is very harassing, very intrusive, very disruptive, very disrespectful. It’s also very unproductive if you want to have an experience of interacting with a whale. So that’s the bad end of the scale. And unfortunately, it does happen like that in a lot of places. In the Dominican Republic there, the rules don’t allow that kind of stuff in the first place. And then the approach that we use, what’s known as a soft in water approach, is a whole different thing. So we spend…
a significant amount of time observing the animals, the whales, before we ever think about making an approach. And I tell our guests every week in our introductory briefings that we’re going to see a lot of whales, but most of the whales we’re not even going to think about trying to swim with. We’re just not, because it’s not appropriate. They’re either not engaged in appropriate behavior, they’re moving, they’re
it’s just not the right thing to do. You don’t just barge in on anything that you see. So we’re looking for a very specific set of behaviors, which primarily is whales that are resting, because if a whale’s not resting, it’s moving. And if a whale’s moving at all, it’s way too fast for anybody, any human, to keep up with their swim without being harassing or anything like that. So we spent a lot of time observing the whales, gauging their behavior.
what they’re doing before we decide whether or not to make an approach or not. There’s a lot of buildup that goes to that and a lot of field experience. Myself, my staff have been doing it for quite a few years and so we can make an assessment based on the animal behavior and our experience to decide whether or not this is appropriate or not. Sometimes we may watch whales for an hour and then say, you know what, we’re not going to do this. We’re gonna go find something else.
On the other side though, is when things look good, then the first thing that happens is the guide will get in the water and swim out quietly and slowly to mark the whales where the whales are resting. And then once we have confirmed, know, visually confirmed that the whale’s resting there, we have the guests get in very quiet, very slow, everything’s very calm, easy, easy, and we explain this in great detail. And they come and then they’ll float there next to the guide.
And then you stop and you wait. And what happens then is completely up to the whales. People, one of the most common questions I get is, how close do we get to the whales? And that’s completely the wrong question. The right question is, how close do the whales get to us? Because once we’ve made this very gentle approach and are in position and holding still, what happens next is up to them. They can either choose to approach,
or not, they can choose to come closely or not, they can choose to stick around for a minute or an hour. It really is up to the individual whales what they feel like doing. Now we’re very lucky that humpback whales are one of the most gregarious cetacean species on the planet. That’s why they’re so popular with whale watching boats. They will come very close to boats and approach boats and mug boats is what it’s called when a whale watches the whale watchers.
and they’re big and beautiful and very intelligent, very curious. And so you let them come to you. And then after that, how long it lasts, how close do they get, everything else, it’s completely up to the whales. They can leave if they want to, they can stay if they want to, and giving them that freedom to approach if they want or not is what addresses that question of harassment or anything like that. It really is an interaction.
interaction between animals, us being one set of animals, the whales being the other, and each of us plays our part and then what they choose to do in their home environment is up to
Dave Bricker (14:30)
Yeah, I love that, Gene, and I agree with you that those concerns are valid, but the idea that you only come so close and the animal either stays where it is, approaches you, or says, I’m having none of this, and they split is a very respectful way to do it. So let’s talk about another marvelous story. And I think it’s something that you educate your guests about on board. About the humpback whales who come to the Silver bank
They travel thousands of miles from the New England area every year. They come down to have their calves, to mate, to court. It’s like the big spring whale convention every year. And then they don’t eat for four months, which is hard to imagine an animal of that size not eating for four months.
Gene Flipse (15:22)
So these whales that we are working with are North Atlantic humpback whales. And by that I mean that they live in the North Atlantic, in the Atlantic Ocean north of the equator. And there are South Atlantic and North and South Pacific humpbacks, et cetera. But these are North Atlantic humpbacks. And all humpbacks are highly migratory. So they have a summer feeding season in high latitudes in colder waters.
where they feed, feed, feed. And then they have a winter breeding season and lower, more tropical latitudes where they come to court and mate or for the pregnant females to give birth to their calf and nurture their calf for a few months before heading back up to the feeding grounds. And they’ve got this migratory pattern going on. So the Silver bank is a breeding ground. The single whales, a single male or a single female will come down there to find a mate, go through the whole courtship thing.
Hopefully attract a mate, successfully mate, become pregnant, and then the females will go. Their gestation period is about a year long, so that pregnant female goes back to her feeding grounds off of New England or the Bay of Fundy or the Gulf of Maine, up off of Iceland or Greenland or the St. Lawrence Seaway, wherever it may be in the North Atlantic. They have all these different feeding areas. And feed, feed, feed like crazy, and then she’ll come back down and give birth.
on the Silver Bank or someplace near there about a year later. So they have that migratory pattern in that breeding cycle, feeding season, breeding season. And so they feed all summer long, feed, feed, feed like crazy and put on as much weight as they can and then they migrate south to the tropics. And not all of them are coming just to the Silver Bank and the Dominican Republic, but the vast majority of North Atlantic humpbacks do come into that area. But they come down there and
That’s where they’re doing all their breeding stuff and they don’t do any feeding at all. They’re just living off their blubber stores during that period of time. It’s not always four months. It can be a couple months. It can be three months. It can be four months. It just depends upon the distances they have to migrate, etc, etc. But for example, pregnant female from when she feeds, she’s pregnant, she’s got this giant baby growing inside of her, she stops feeding to migrate south to give birth.
she gives birth, then she’s nursing her calf while she’s down there for a couple months while the calf puts on some weight, gains some strength for the migration back north again. And this whole time she’s nursing something like 50 gallons of milk a day. And all of this is coming from her blubber stores. And by the time she gets back up to her feeding grounds again, research has found that it’s possible she’s lost up to one third of her body weight. So…
A 35 ton female whale could lose almost 12 to 13, 14 tons before she feeds again, which is amazing. And you see them down there and the behaviors that they’re engaging in and all the activity and you think they’re all doing that on an empty stomach, it’s quite remarkable.
Dave Bricker (18:38)
Yeah, sounds like anybody working on battery technology would do well to study the humpback whales. So, Gene, let’s talk about commercial whaling, because this is mostly stopped around the world, and I think that’s popularly supported.
Gene Flipse (18:44)
Hey
Dave Bricker (18:56)
And because of that humpback whale populations among many have rebounded. What’s going on with whaling and the International Whaling Commission? And as consumers, what can we do to discourage countries like Iceland and Japan and the Faroe Islands from continuing their whaling practices?
Gene Flipse (19:15)
It’s a big subject. so getting to the IWC, the International Whaling Commission, part of that question. The International Whaling Commission, most people think of it as some sort of a conservation organization. And it’s not. At its heart, at its origins, it was a commercial whaling operation, a commission set up to regulate commercial whaling.
so that as an industry, whaling is an industry, but the whaling industry was doing so well in the 60s and 70s, they were putting themselves out of business and realizing that they were not going to be able to continue. And there was a growing environmental awareness at the time, the whole Save the Whales campaign that came along and basically changed everything. The IWC by default became a conservation organization, but always with the intention that eventually
populations would rebound to the point where they could be commercially whaled again. And so there is that. The underlying intention is to get whales populations back up to a number where we can start killing them again. And most people aren’t really that aware of that underlying motivation, but there it is. The populations are increasing quite admirably in a lot of places. Humpback whales are doing reasonably well to the point where commercial whaling really is not their biggest threat.
but there is some commercial whaling still going on. A few countries continue to commercially whale anyway. Japan famously uses a loophole where under the IWC regimens, if you are doing research, lethal research on a whale and the whale is killed as part of the research, it would be a shame for that resource to go to waste. So yeah, okay. If you kill a whale researching it, you can do commercial stuff with it. Well,
Japan has decided for quite a years now that they’ll just commercially research whales to death and make what money they can off of it. It’s not a great industry and it’s a whole long story, but they’ve got that going on. Then other countries like Iceland, for example, are just a bit more nationalistic, well, we’re traditionally a whaling nation. We’re an independent nation. We’re going to basically do what we want to do
and you can’t stop us which is true because the IWC doesn’t really have too many teeth they really can’t do a whole lot to stop the country from doing that they can’t even stop that country from just leaving the IWC completely but I guess the thinking is better to keep them in the IWC where at least you can talk to them than have them just completely leave the whole commission and be completely rogue out on their own so politically
It takes like the environmental awareness of the 70s, the Save the Whales campaign, it takes that kind of political willpower to help motivate countries to stop and do that kind of thing. And that’s where you were saying as consumers, your question that you said, what can we as consumers do to help stop this kind of thing? On some political fronts and economic fronts, because those often come hand in hand, the United States, for example, could enforce
the Pell Amendment. There’s an amendment, International Trade Agreement, that if a country is doing things untoward with or towards endangered species, other trade can be affected. The vast majority of the fish and chips that people buy and the McFish sandwiches and things like that, Iceland sells an awful lot of seafood to the United States. And so the United States could enforce the Pell Amendment and
you’re killing whales, we’re not buying your seafood anymore. And that would get their attention very quickly. And it’s been going hot and cold where there’s been the threat of enforcing this and having that kind of economic impact. And it goes back and forth. the different whaling countries are not quite, but almost at a tipping point where they’re, okay, we’re stopping. Okay, no, we’re carrying on. And it’s been back and forth. And it’s a big geopolitical.
economic kind of thing, macroeconomics and big politics. But as consumers, what you can do is try to avoid buying some of the things. Know where your money goes. When you buy that fish stick, where is it coming from? From an Iceland fishery where the guy that’s doing the Icelandic fishing also might have a whale boat, literally, down the way that he uses for whaling. Support, spend your eco tour dollars wisely.
You can go to Iceland, which is a beautiful place to go. It’s been on my list for a long time, but I know some whale watch operators there. Where there’s literally, you can go whale watching on this part of the wharf and right down the wharf there is where the whaling boats are tied up and they go out and commercially whale. And so when you go to Iceland, there’s a campaign, there’s a German organization, which I’m sorry, I’m forgetting their name, but they had a campaign going in Iceland.
because you can go to a restaurant in Reykjavik and buy a whale as your entree for dinner. And so this organization came in and said, who is eating the whale meat that’s being harvested in Iceland? And their findings was that it wasn’t Icelanders. 90 % of what was being eaten was being served at restaurants in Reykjavik. Because, come to Iceland, eat traditional food, eat whale meat, it’s a traditional kind of thing.
And it turns out that no, it’s being marketed that way, but it’s not true. So this organization had a campaign, meet us, don’t eat us at the airports, flyers and posters. Go out on a whale watching boat, send your eco driven dollars that way, don’t eat it in the restaurants. And if you’re in a restaurant and they’re serving it, let them know that we don’t appreciate what your establishment’s doing here, that kind of thing, money talks. So being aware of where your money goes, what it’s buying.
And when you travel especially, that has an impact too. People can come to the Dominican Republic and go out to the Silver Bank and it supports the economy of that country significantly. It’s a big contribution to them and that definitely helps a lot. The Dominican Republic has set up a great sanctuary. They’ve got good rules. They’re very ethical about it. Have been for decades. So they deserve the tourist business for that reason alone, if not others. So that’s how people can help out.
interwoven thing, but being informed consumers and knowing where your money is supporting or not, who and what your money is supporting or not supporting is an important step.
Dave Bricker (26:06)
Love that, Gene. So look, obviously whaling is not the major threat to whales these days. And yet, the North Atlantic right whale is down, I think, to 350 or 400 individuals. It’s almost extinct. And what threats are whales facing today? And what have you seen firsthand?
Gene Flipse (26:25)
Yeah, the right whales, the North Atlantic right whales, they’re, you’re about right, I think it’s around 350 or so, and they’re in a very precarious position. And as you quite rightly mentioned, anywhere in the world really, it’s not commercial whaling that’s the biggest threat. Yes, Japan, Iceland, some of these places do kill some whales in the order of dozens or more, and that’s bad, but the bigger threats do far more damage. So the big ones are entanglement,
which is basically getting tangled up in something and that causing injury or drowning, et cetera. And 90 % of the time or more, the vast majority, the entanglement is a result of interaction with fisheries, nets, lobster, crab traps, float lines, that kind of stuff. Entanglement’s a big one. And then also ship strikes. Right whales, they spend a lot of time near the surface. They’re slow moving. They stay very close to the coast.
here in North Florida where I live, during the right season, you can go to St. Augustine and go out to the beaches, and if you’re lucky, you can look off the beach and literally see whales right off the beach. So those whales, because of all the marine traffic and their proximity to shore, they’re at great risk. it’s entangled with a really dangerous one, ship strikes is another, and then there’s other things like pollution, environmental pollutions and contaminants, plastics are a big issue, noise pollution, things like that. But the two that
create the most immediate threats are entanglement, which kills something like 300 ,000 cetaceans every year. So people get outraged that Japan is killing a few dozen whales. It’s bad, it doesn’t have to happen, they shouldn’t be whaling anymore, but a few dozen whales compared to 300 ,000 cetaceans, it’s just a whole different order of magnitude that’s going on there.
entanglement and shipstrike are things that people can do something about, willingness too. But it just takes quite a bit of effort, political will, economic viability, the awareness and willingness to actually try to approach some of these things.
Dave Bricker (28:37)
So, you’re tuned into Speakipedia Media for aspiring and professional speakers and thought leaders who want to make more money by changing hearts, minds, and fortunes. My guest today is Captain Gene Flipse from Conscious Breath Adventures. Each year, he takes 200 guests to swim with the wild humpback whales on the Silver Bank north of the Dominican Republic.
So Gene, we’ve been talking about ship strikes and whaling. Let’s move back to the bright side, because the whales still come to the Silver Bank every year Aside from in -water encounters, what kinds of surface behaviors do your guests get to observe?
Gene Flipse (29:19)
The Silver Bank is the North Atlantic humpback’s breeding ground. So as I mentioned earlier, single whales, a single female, not pregnant, a single male whale will migrate down to that area to find a mate. And like many other kinds of animals, when there’s mating activities going on, there’s all sorts of behaviors and things happening. Think of a popular bar in a big city somewhere.
There’s all sorts of behavior going on there when you see the mating game happening. And the humpback whales, they’re big whales. They’re the seventh largest. They have big pectoral fins, the largest of any species of cetacean, very showy, very surface active whales. And so there’s all sorts of behaviors that they use in courtship and social settings, which is what the Silver bank is. So you can see things like pec fin slapping.
where they take their big pectoral fin and they smack it on the surface of water. Very loud, very splashy, very dramatic behavior. Or tail lobbing or lob tailing, tail slapping, where they’ll slap their tail on the surface of the water. And these big surface behaviors make a lot of noise and the sound travels under the water at great distance. They can do a breach, of course, which is the one that they’re most famous for, where the whale will come up and out of the water.
launching itself completely out of the water or partly out of the water and twisting and crashing down in this big beautiful display that people love so much. There’s others. There’s spy hopping, which is where they stick their nose out of the water and put their eyes up and look around. And they do all of this in this social context. We may not always understand exactly what every behavior means all the time, but in the context of the largest breeding ground of the North Atlantic, and when you see groups of whales or two whales interacting with each other,
it’s obvious that the intention is very social, the meaning is very social there. And some behaviors have more or better understood interpretations and some are a little bit more mysterious. Nobody’s really sure why a humpback whale breaches. Sure seems like a lot of fun and that might be all there is to it, that that whale is just having a good time. Or popular scientific explanation is that they’re dislodging parasites or shaking off dead skin or something like that.
Also true, but exactly why they’re really doing it, nobody really knows. But all these other big behaviors are super exciting, really fun to see. And that’s what, besides being in the water, people get is some really world -class way of watching there too.
Dave Bricker (31:57)
So many of our listeners know what it’s like to live and travel on a cruise ship. But what is it like to stay at anchor for five nights on a 115 foot dive boat? Is this roughing it?
Gene Flipse (32:10)
Not by any standards really, it’s different. But it’s not roughing it. There’s big difference between a cruise ship and 115 foot boat, obviously. And it’s mostly for the better in my opinion. The boat that we use, we can carry 20 people and we have an excellent crew of eight or nine. And then there’s myself and one or two more staff.
that are there to take care of everybody and deal with all the different aspects. So people come aboard the boat, they have the room, we have a galley staff that does an excellent job of providing delicious meals and snacks. The rooms are nice and brightly lit and clean and very comfortable. The boat is a very seaworthy 115 feet. It’s a big boat by most people’s standards, but for an ocean going vessel, it’s not particularly big. But we moor up in an area behind the coral reef there where it’s relatively sheltered.
and the boat settles in quite nicely. And then the best thing about it is, okay, the accommodations are great. You’ve got a nice room, you’ve got great food, good company, lots of other like -minded guests with you out there. But the cool thing about it is that we are moored up in the middle of the largest breeding ground of the North Atlantic humpbacks. 24 hours a day. We can see whales any time of day or even at night. Sometimes the whales would come close enough to the boat that we could see them at night.
And it’s an amazing experience to be literally in their environment. And that’s just part of it. The other part of the experience that’s very hard to share with people, for people to understand, is the camaraderie that comes from being with 19 other like -minded shipmates out in this environment, sharing this experience for five, six days at a stretch. Lots of good friendships have been formed out there.
and folks that come back year after year or have met on the Silver bank and go traveling elsewhere and do other trips in other parts of the world. We haven’t had any relationships that have led to any weddings or anything yet, but it could happen. We’ve had people come out on honeymoons, but we haven’t had any new relationships that have gone that far so far that I’m
Dave Bricker (34:25)
Well, let’s get to the main attraction because I think there is a particular story that people engage with Conscious Breath Adventures and come out to the Silver Bank to experience. So what is it like to look a 40 foot humpback whale in the eye?
Gene Flipse (34:43)
When people come out to the Silver Bank, I try to ask everybody that comes along, what brings you, especially folks that haven’t been there before, what is it that brings you out to see the whales on the Silver Bank? What experience are you anticipating? What do you want? What are you hoping for? And some of that is just trying to manage expectations. Most folks when they come out have reasonably realistic expectations, like they’re not gonna go out and get the ride on a whale and some of these kinds of crazy things.
I try to explain that way early in the process that this is not what happens out there. The in -water approach is the way I described it earlier. But the most common answer, what are people looking for? They want to look a whale in the eye. They want to look into the eye of a whale. And it seems a little funny, maybe, like, why is that? And the reason for that is that, you know, if you go out on a whale watching boat and you see a whale, a lot of times you just see a blow or you see a tail.
And that’s it. The whale watching trip is success. People go whale watching to connect with something literally and figuratively bigger than they are. Personified, know, Mother Nature personified in a whale to make that connection that’s so often lost these days in modern times. And so when you go out and you have the chance, eye eye contact is one of the most intimate kinds of contacts that you can have between two living creatures. You know, looking into the eye of somebody that you’re attracted to or looking into the eye of your
your dog or your cat and there’s that connection. It’s very powerful connection there. And so that’s what people want. That’s the ultimate to be able to look into the eye of a humpback whale. And when it happens, it’s a very powerful experience because keep in mind you’re 75 miles offshore, the water is 80 to 100 feet deep. Here’s this animal that’s as big as a school bus that can go away if it wants to. And sometimes they do, but sometimes…
They’re curious enough about us, just us measly little wiggly people up on the surface, that they want to come and check us out and look us in the eye too. Why is that? What is this animal thinking? And it’s obvious it’s thinking something. You can look into the eye, you see an intelligence there. The way they behave, the way they act, it’s obvious that there’s intelligence. They’re not just these big brainless behemoths by any means. What’s it thinking? What’s it thinking? Why does it even care that I’m here? And it can be an extremely powerful experience for people.
The first few years I was doing this, the boat that I hired to serve my guests, the guests would come up from having this experience for the first time, and it’s not unusual for people to break down crying, because they’re so moved by the experience. And the crew on the boat would look, and here’s a couple of their guests that are bawling their eyes out on the boat. And they’re like, in their experience, crying guests is a bad thing. And they’d look at me like, what do we do? What do we do? Don’t worry, they’re having a good time, you know? Because it’s such an incredible experience.
And then after the crew had seen that enough times, now they know. When they see somebody crying on the deck of their boat, they go over and give them big hug because they’re having a very powerful and emotional experience. And some people will just be giddy with laughter. We get people whose masks will flood because when they smile, they make these big creases here and the water floods and then their mask fills up with water. So I have to tell people, you’re smiling too much. You’re smiling too much. That’s why your mask is filling with water. And it’s very humbling.
A lot of people will say it’s borders on being a spiritual experience because it’s like they’re looking into the eye of Mother Nature right there. it sounds… It’s hard to put into words adequately, but it’s very humbling, very powerful, very emotional. It can make people laugh, it make people cry, can make people feel much stronger connection with the bigger environment and the universe and all that kind of thing. It’s literally…
For some people it’s been life changing. I’ve had guests that have come out that after they did their trip, switched careers and went off to pursue something that they’ve been thinking about. Maybe it involved whales, maybe it didn’t, but have been inspired to go and take these big steps. And it’s that kind of thing. It worked for me. I told you very early on. I was happy being a boat captain and doing my thing and was happy running the boats and doing what I was doing. And then I had my own experiences with the whales in the water.
And when there was an opportunity to be sure that I could continue to do that, I made a change and pursued something that wasn’t a natural fit for me. Entrepreneurialism, being a businessman, running an operation like that, but it literally changed the course of my life. So you don’t need to go any further than to find out that that’s not an exaggeration. It happened to me and it happens to others sometimes too.
Dave Bricker (39:31)
And I think you’ve done a fantastic job putting it into words, Gene. And I agree, it’s somewhat transcendent, but I think you did an admirable job. Now, this is something that takes place in a wild setting, and people are naturally going to be concerned about the variables that affect any kind of a wild adventure, the weather. Are the whales always there? Do they arrive late? Do they leave early?
What’s the success rate as far as getting people into the water to swim with the whales?
Gene Flipse (40:06)
The whales migrate down there so they have a migratory season and a breeding season. They are coming down to this part of the Caribbean. They usually start showing up sometime late December -ish, sort of around New Year’s -ish kind time. Then they’re there until all through April, even into early May. Obviously the numbers, there’s peak times, there’s times when there’s less, and there’s times when there’s more. The whales are probably down there.
some numbers during probably around four months or so. And we operate a 10 or 11 week season that’s at the peak of that time. So will we see whales? Yes, when we’re there we’re confident we’re going to see whales virtually every day. I say virtually because maybe there’s a chance, but I honestly can’t think of a day where we never actually saw a whale. We see whales, the whales are there, we see whales every day.
And like anything, some days there’s more, sometimes there’s less, but it’s the biggest breeding ground of the North Atlantic humpback and it’s the peak of their season, so the odds are extremely good. So seeing whales, we’re gonna see whales. And we get to do a lot of great whale watching, like I described before. As far as getting in the water with the whales go, we have a lot of opportunity, that’s the main thing. There’s a couple things that work in our favor. One is, we’re on site for a full five days. And so maybe one day, one afternoon, one morning,
The activity is a little bit more distant, it’s a little bit slower, the whales are a little bit more restless, everybody’s moving around. Maybe one day is not as good as we would like, but you have other days to work with. And so you don’t have to be too aggressive or you have that leisure of time. Well, it didn’t work out this afternoon, but we still have a couple of days. And so we see whales every day, we swim with them on most.
Maybe not, I’d be lying if I said we swam with them every single day, but we usually do. And so in the course of a given week, the chance of being in the water with the whale and having a good, meaningful interaction, not just the whale swimming away, but two species looking at each other and interacting with each other, having a good interaction, that’s the goal in any given week is in…
like the upper 90th percentile or so. It’s over the course of a week. It may not happen every day, but it very easily can. But over the course of a week, the odds are really, really quite high. It’s really successful destination. And knowing which whales to approach, which ones not to approach, saves a lot of wear and tear, a lot of expended energy that won’t yield good results anyway. So it works out quite nicely.
Dave Bricker (42:54)
Excellent. So Captain Gene, you are one of the few people on planet Earth who can say they’ve swum with humpback whales literally hundreds if not thousands of times. So an encounter that’s absolutely mind -blowing for one of your guests might feel almost typical to you. What are a few of your own most memorable encounters with whales?
Gene Flipse (43:18)
There’s, it’s really, that’s one of those trick questions that’s very hard to answer because there’s quite a few that are amazing. And anytime that I’m in the water with the whale, or all of our guests are in the water with the whale, you never really know, okay, there’s patterns of behavior that you recognize and you can anticipate to a certain extent that in this situation we can expect this to happen, but.
you never really know what’s gonna happen every time you get in the water. It’s just not for sure. We’ve had some great experiences with baby whales that are very curious and very interactive and playful, or groups of whales where we’ve had interactions with four five whales at a time that social groups that were interacting, and that’s incredible when you’re just looking around and there’s whales left, right, in front, behind you. Just amazing, amazing kind of stuff.
The thing that happens to me every season, at least once a season, you’re here we are, 75 miles offshore, 80 feet of water, school bus size, the animal right there, and the guide, one of their first things to do once we have decided that we’re making the effort, we slip in the water and we swim quietly out to where the whales are and say, okay, they’re here, you know, and we’re marking the whales, and then we start directing the guests, the boat driver and such to come up to put our guests in the water.
And every year I get this very strong feeling of surrealism. Where here I am, 75 miles offshore, deep water, school bus sized wild animal. And then over here is a group of 10 people in a skiff, coming from the Midwest or France or Italy or China or Australia or Spain or anywhere in the world. And I’m in the middle. Here’s these big wild animals and here’s these tourists.
And I’m in the middle going, come on everybody, let’s meet here. And it’s just an incredibly surreal thing. Like, how the heck did I end up in this position? How does anybody call this work? How is this conceivable? How is this possible? And so when I get that feeling, it’s really something kind of exciting or fun because it’s so unreal. For the first few years I was doing it when I meet people and tell them, I take people swimming with whales for a living.
They’d be like, no you don’t. I can tell from the tone of your voice, you’re making that up. And I would never be a good used car salesman, right? Because I just wear my heart on my sleeve. And it’s true. For those couple years, it sounds like such a crazy thing to say. I take people that I almost, I couldn’t believe it was actually true for myself. This is actually what I do. And so when I tell people, thought I was making it up. And I give them my business card and say, no, look, here, check out my website.
Sometimes somebody would get in touch later and be like, my God, you really do take people swimming with whales. And it was like, yeah, I know, it’s incredible, isn’t it? And now, after all the years, I’ve done it enough to where, yep, I can say that, and it’s true. But it’s just that kind of surreal, unbelievable experience or aspect of the whole thing that makes it special, even with the long hours and the many years of doing it and everything else, it’s still just an incredible thing I get to do.
Dave Bricker (46:35)
new dimension to the idea of imposter syndrome. love that, Gene. So if one of our listeners wants to enjoy that bucket list experience of swimming with the humpback whales, Where can they discover more?
Gene Flipse (46:40)
You
best place to go is onto the web and find our website which is consciousbreathadventures .com and find us there. You can learn all about the activities of Swim with the Whales and you can check out our boats and learn a little bit about the staff and all that kind of stuff. The website is full of great basic information and of course one of best things is my phone number or an email address where you can write and get in touch with me. I’m always happy. Give me a call if you want to.
It’s always a pleasure to talk about the whales. It’s a fun thing to do and it’s just like this. I’m happy to have a chat with you and tell you all about it.
Dave Bricker (47:28)
Captain Gene Flipse, thank you so much for being my guest. I love your passion for this.
Gene Flipse (47:35)
Thanks for having me, it’s a pleasure talking with you and hope to see you with whales again sometime soon.
Dave Bricker (47:42)
I’m Dave Bricker, inviting you to explore the world’s most comprehensive resource for speakers and storytellers at speakipedia .com. If you’re watching this on social media video, please love, subscribe, and share your comments. If you’re listening to the podcast, keep your hands on the wheel, stay safe, and I’ll see you on the next episode of Speakipedia Media.
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