“A beach is not only a sweep of sand, but shells of sea creatures, the sea glass, the seaweed, the incongruous objects washed up by the ocean”, says the great American Journalist, Henry Grunwald. And certainly, the ocean is so vast, it seems like it’s never-ending.

What all an ocean can hold is beyond our perception, and incomparable. When in 2017, Asha de Vos, a marine mammal researcher started an expedition in the Northern part of the Indian Ocean, she and her team made a breath-taking discovery which no one was prepared for.

It is incredible how for some people, a simple and ordinary day can turn out be the day they create history on. Asha de Vos and her team experienced a day like this, and pages were added in the books of history.

Asha de Vos

Asha de Vos, returned to her homeland after she had completed her studies abroad and earned a Ph.D. in Marine Mammal Research. And this started the story of the great discovery. Asha de Vos had decided to carry forward a big task. She had embarked on a journey to research about blue whales in the Indian Ocean. Instead, what she was going to come across would be something she would have never anticipated. In the hopes to do something for the welfare of whales, Asha de Vos and her team started their expedition in February of 2017. The boat was packed and filled with types of equipment. However, the whole team was unaware that they would witness the biggest adventure of their lives.

Offshore

The marine biologist and her team started off their journey and reached seven kilometers away from the shore. It was an area that was frequently visited by fishermen and whale watchers yet, nobody ever noticed what hid inside that area. Since the area was one of those places where human activities were frequent, the team had not even expected to find many blue whales, but to their surprise, they would find something much more than that.de Vos and her team had to go much farther in the sea and when they were moving eyes in the hope to find blue whales, the team saw something very unique and huge, larger than the size of a school bus.

Clicked

De Vos did not want to miss the golden opportunity of witnessing something so unique so she ran inside the vessel and brought her camera. She started taking pictures of the rare creature, clicking as fervently as possible. Asha wanted to be sure that she had all the evidences of witnessing this strange sea creature and so she started taking notes of all the little details of the creature. She wanted to be sure to observe every minute characteristic. After noticing and capturing every detail about the unique creature the team of marine biologists went back on land and went straight to their field house where they could have more details and find out what they had just discovered!

Comparisons

De Vos’ company had a policy of keeping photo ID’s of all the whales that are around the world, so she knew what to do next. She started comparing all the ID’s to the images she had clicked to see what exactly was the creature that they had just discovered.There was one thing that was very different in this creature. Its skin was water-colored and it had chevron markings on its skin all over.After looking at the images herself, Asha decided to send the pictures to her colleagues so that they could give her a better insight into what the creature exactly was and they would be able to come to a conclusion.

Confirmed

De Vos’ colleagues, Dr. Robert Brownell and Dr. Salvatore Cerchio both saw the pictures and surprisingly after examining the pictures, both her colleagues and Asha had surprisingly suspected the creature to be of the same species. Asha and her team had found the very rare Omura’s whale. The Omura’s whale had been in the sea since ancient times, but the species was classified as a separate one only recently, in Japan in 2003, when modern science and DNA testing had started to flourish. The fact that this species was so rare made the discovery even more special.