The First Whale-Watching Station in Sri Lanka

Thursday, October 8th, 2020 | Blog

The first ever land based whale- and dolphin-watching station in Sri Lanka is reported to have been set up on Norway Islet in Koddiyar Bay, Trincomalee, in the early 1980s. The location has the best possible line of sight for whales, directly overlooking the Trincomalee canyon system, which begins east of Tambalagam Bay, runs between Norway Islet and Round Island, and continues northeastward east of Swami Rock.

The station was manned during the daytime by a team of Japanese marine biologists, who (along with American and Sri Lankan colleagues) had begun studying the whales of Trincomalee in 1983. Unfortunately, no documentary records of their work are known to exist.

Quoted from Out of the Blue, by Howard Martenstyn