Captain Piers' Whales / Las ballenas del Capitán Piers

I met Captain Piers in Turks and Caicos in the late 90s while on a ‘live aboard’. We used to chat a lot about diving in the archipelago, but whenever he got the chance, he would talk about HIS whales. Every January, he would set sail for the Silver Bank to look for them.
More than 8 hours by boat from the shores of the Dominican Republic, in the middle of nowhere, lies the famous Silver Bank, stretching across 200 square miles. The coral heads sometimes appear at the surface and the average depth doesn’t even reach the 20 meter mark. It is easy to imagine what a deadly trap this was for those old galleons, without on-board GPS or sonar equipment. The same trap that some centuries later ensnared the freighter Polyxeni, now a rusted symbol of the whale sanctuary created by the Dominican government.