The recent discovery of the vast gathering of whales up to 300, is a one good reason to do whale watching in Sri Lanka, below this web page you can watch BBC documentary about whale gathering. Sri Lanka is also a popular destination for Dolphin watching excursion all around the year. The Best place to do whale watching in Sri Lanka is Mirissa because it close to Dondra Point there is a resident blue whale colony in their natural habitat so you defiantly see whales. Apart from Mirissa you can do whale watching in Kalpitya and Trincomalee as well..
In this sailing excursions you can see Blue whales, Sperm whales, Fin whales, Bryde´s whales, sometimes Killer whales, and lots of dolphin Species, including Risso's dolphins Bottlenose dolphins, Striped dolphins and Spinner dolphins. Sometimes you can see reptiles and various fish species, for example, flying fish and Bluefin tuna.
Sri Lanka is also great place watch dolphins, you can watch this highly intelligent creature on their natural habitat. Dolphins swimming, diving alongside you in a perfect synchronize, is truly joyful and magnificent view you must watch. If you visit the Kalpitiya area from November to March/April. You will witness pods of up to thousands of dolphins, playing and doing their acrobatic things.
Whales are classified as mammals (Mammalia), they fall into groups called "infraorder Cetacea" and dolphins are not among this group. Whales are the largest animal ever lived on planet earth, largest whales will dwarf dinosaurs. The closest living relatives of whales are the hippopotamuses, they apart From their evolutionary tree over 40 million years ago.
The whales consist of eight surviving families: Physeteridae (the sperm whale),Balaenidae (right whales),Balaenopteridae (the rorquals),Ziphiidae (the beaked whales),etotheriidae (the pygmy right whale),Eschrichtiidae (the grey whale),Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals) and Kogiidae (the dwarf and pygmy sperm whale).
Whales are fully aquatic placental warm blooded marine mammals of the open ocean, they mate, feed, give birth, suckle and raise their young at deep ocean. Whales range in size from the 2.6 metres to 29.9 metres, The dwarf sperm whale is the smallest species commonly known as a Dwarf whale. It grows up to 2.7 m (8.9 ft) in length and 250 kilograms, and blue whale is the largest weighting approximately 200 metric tons.
Whales species are predatory and carnivorous mammals, some species show sexual dimorphism, females are larger than males. Blue whale only eats Krills and it usually eats 40 million krill each day, roughly 3.6 Metric tons of krills. Daily energy requirement is 1.5 million kilocalories, while some Whales species eat planktons, Squid, Octopus, Small crabs, schooling fish crustaceans and other invertebrates.
Whales evolutionary branch come from land-living mammals like hippopotamus therefore they have to breathe air regularly, yet they hold their breath and remain submerged under water for longer periods of time, as much as 90 minutes. Whales have modified nostrils located on top of their heads, through which they breathe.However, they cannot survive on land, not because they can not breath, they die from overheating, their body's thick layer of blubber will produce lots of heat, unless they are not in the water they cannot disburse heat into the water and a whale's skeleton structural integrity become more vulnerable on land because there is no buoyancy to support their enormous 200 ton weight like in the open saltwater.
Assemblies of sperm Whales, the likes of which had not been seen for centuries, happening once again here in the tropical seas surrounding Sri Lanka, there are reports of the vast gathering of Whales up to 300 individual whales. They come here to avoid cold weather, raise their young, feed, and use it as a mating ground. there is a 95% chance you spot them while your doing whale watching excursion.