Fred's WhaleBlog

2:00 Whale Watch for 8/19/2010

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:54:09 -0400

[Note: Having been placed on the "naturalist disabled list", I was a guest whale watcher aboard the Tails of the Sea for this trip.]

On this afternoon's trip we headed ENE from Plymouth, bound for Stellwagen Bank, and ended up on the eastern edge of the southern end of the Bank, as we have on most trips over the last several weeks. In our vicinity out there, there were well over a dozen humpback whales, feeding in groups of two to five, and the occasional minke whale. We were able to identify, among the humpbacks, Cajun and calf, Perseid and calf, Milkweed, Pele, Pumba, Draco, Eruption, Jabiru, Venom, Springboard, Hancock, and Ventisca.

When we started approaching the first group of humpbacks, one whale's dorsal fin stood out from the rest, even at a moderate distance (see the above image) - the whitish dorsal fin of Ventisca could be spotted right away. Ventisca, first seen in Massachusetts in 2001 (her mother's identity is unknown to us), is an unusually pigmented humpback whale - she has sometimes been described as a "partial albino", but correct terminology would instead refer to her as a ~leucistic~ animal. In most ways, Ventisca does follow the typical western North Atlantic pigment pattern, but she does differ from most in the details.

There actually is no such thing as a "partial albino" - albino animals (including albino humans) totally lack the pigment melanin, and have totally white or pinkish skin, along with whitish hair, feathers, or scales, and have translucent irises in their eyes. (In albinos, any pinkish skin coloring is due to the effect of many skin capillaries showing through, sine they are not masked by melanin, and reddish eyes are due to the capillaries in the retina showing through the cornea, unmasked by any pigmentation in the iris.) However, there are also leucistic animals, who do possess melanin, and who may display pigmentation over various parts of their body (and who have normally pigmented irises), but who may lack surface melanin in various areas - such seems to be the case with Ventisca.

"Ventisca" is the Spanish word for "blizzard", and it is an entirely appropriate name for Ventisca the whale. Unlike the normally dark dorsal fins of the vast majority of humpbacks, both sides of her dorsal fin, even at a distance, appear to be mostly whitish in color (although the leading and trailing edges of the dorsal fin are somewhat darker).

A closer look at Ventisca's dorsal fin (above) shows that the whitish coloring is not uniform, but is the result of a filigree of a variably streaked and blotchy frosting, looking very much like wind-driven snow in a blizzard. This would not seem to be the result of scarring (as occasional white areas on the upper torsos of other humpbacks are usually due to), but does appear to be natural in origin (even if such markings are unusual for the vast majority of humpbacks).

As nearly every whale watcher knows, there are variable amounts and locations for white and black areas on the ventral (underside) surface of humpback tail flukes. In that sense, Ventisca is sort of "normal" (see the above image), but a closer look at the details reveals that Ventisca lacks the clear differentiation between the typically large and definite dark and light areas that most humpbacks display, and instead she shows a rather frosted appearance due to myriad minute black and white markings (image below).

The dorsal surface of Ventisca's flukes is also unusually pigmented as well (although this difference is not overly obvious - and I'll bet that many passengers on this afternoon's trip did not notice this). In nearly all humpbacks (with occasional exceptions due to white scars), the upper surface of the flukes is uniformly dark. But this is not so in the case of Ventisca (image below) - the leading edge of the dorsal surface is whitish, and most of the trailing upper surface is etched by a pattern of small black and white lines and spots. If one were to divide, from front to back, the dorsal surface of her flukes into fourths, it would appear that only the second fourth is dark - the leading one fourth and the trailing two fourths are quite light in comparison.

Why this may often be overlooked is because glare off of the water running off her flukes when lifted in the air may mask this effect. However, an image of Ventisca's flukes taken on an earlier whale watch (below) shows the exact same pattern for her discrete black and white markings.

The mottled pigmentation extends onto Ventisca's ventral surface, too. An examination of Ventisca's caudal peduncle (tailstock) (see the two images from this afternoon below) shows the same unusual pattern of small black and white markings found elsewhere on Ventisca's body.

Both albinism (especially) and leucism in whales are very uncommon. If Herman Melville's 1851 fictional white sperm whale, Moby Dick, did have any basis in reality, it could have come from an actual leucistic or albino sperm whale - in the early 1800's there was indeed a very large and notoriously aggressive white sperm whale in the southeastern Pacific, nicknamed "Mocha Dick" by whalers who unsuccessfully hunted it for many years starting in 1810, before finally killing it in 1838. (The name "Mocha" referred to the island of Mocha, west of the Chilean coast, and not to the whale's color.)

In more recent years there have been occasional albino and leucistic cetaceans both observed and photographed. A pinkish bottlenose dolphin (likely an albino due to its reddish eyes) has been documented swimming along the Louisiana coast since 2007, as has a light gray leucistic orca (killer whale) among the Aleutian Islands since 2008. A mostly white leucistic right whale calf was born in 2008 off western Australia. But the most famous modern white whale has to be the male humpback named Migaloo (Australian Aborigine for "white fella"), who has been witnessed migrating along the eastern Australian coast every year since 1991. (Migaloo does appear to be entirely white, but it is still uncertain if he is a true albino or is "merely" very dramatically leucistic.)

Certainly, "our" Ventisca does not possess the extreme pigmentation (or lack thereof) of the above whales and dolphin, but she does appear to be the most visibly leucistic whale in the Massachusetts humpback population, and she is a beautiful animal to see (but, then again, aren't they all?).

All of the original image files for this day are available at http://www.flukeshots.net/2010/100819/

9:00 Whale Watch for 8/7/2010

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 22:04:14 -0400

[Note: Having been placed on the "naturalist disabled list", I was a guest whale watcher aboard the Capt. John & Son IV for this trip.]

Today was an incredibly clear day on Massachusetts Bay - visibility was essentially unlimited. The wind was light as well, so that the seas varied from glassy to only a slight chop, making for a beautiful day on the water.

Heading across the Bay and up onto Stellwagen bank, we did see (but passed by) a couple of minke whales - we elected to keep going out towards the E, since we knew that we were likely going to have to "go the distance" out to the E side of the Bank in order to find some humpback whales.

We did end up in the same general area we have had to travel to over the last few weeks, but we did get to watch two groups of humpback whales, five in each group, doing some subsurface feeding (but fortunately not diving for very long periods at all).

One group of whales included Cajun and her calf (above image of their dorsal fins), Milkweed (often seen with Cajun as of late), Bolide (first flukeshot, with mostly dark flukes, below), and an unknown humpback (which I do not believe I've ever seen before in our humpback catalog - second flukeshot below).

The other group of five whales included another mother and calf pair (Whisk and her pup - see Whisk's flukeshot below), Alphorn and Pele (both often seen with or near each other and with Cajun and her calf over the past few weeks, although on this trip we saw them associated with Whisk and her calf), and one more unidentified whale.

It was intriguing to observe the cooperative feeding behavior of the two fivesomes. In general, all five whales in each group would dive close together (Pele always being the first of the Whisk group to sound), and then would generally return to the surface together (although sometimes one calf or the other, not being such good breath holders as the adults, would sometimes pop to the surface earlier than the adults did).

Near the end of our time watching whales, both groups surfaced ahead of us, with one group out in front to the right of our bow and the other group ahead to the left, and then Cajun's calf breached clear of the water (unfortunately just once and without warning, hence no photo). So, we ended our trip far out to the E in dramatic fashion, watching all ten whales in two close groups all at the same time, with one calf breaching for an exclamation point, before we finally had to head back to port.

We did see a few times some seaweed floating loose in the water (sample above, of a green seaweed with some delicate red algae attached), and I am reminded of an important point for whale watchers to note. Although we do occasionally see seaweeds floating offshore, they are always drifters from some shallow shore area somewhere, since the bottom depths out around the whales (typically 100-plus feet on Stellwagen Bank, and even deeper outside the Bank) is far too deep for light to penetrate enough for bottom plants to grow. Instead, the basis of the elaborate food web that involves the whales is microscopic floating algae (phytoplankton), which is also (sort of) shown in the above photo above by the greenish tinge to the water around the macroscopic seaweeds.

Although on every whale watch we necessarily have to spend part of each trip "commuting" to and from the whales, it is certainly not wasted time, as there are always many other natural and man-made items to observe as well. Unfortunately, not all of these "extras" are delightful to see. On the way out towards the whales on this trip, when we were probably nine or ten miles from Plymouth, we saw a lone jet ski (shown above) and its rider heading S across our path, "way out in the middle of nowhere". Well, of course, it was literally not "nowhere", but it certainly was a long way from land (that's Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, probably about a dozen miles away in the background of this telephoto shot). Admittedly it was a very clear day, with slight seas, but this single jet skier, without any companion at all, out in open water many miles from the closest shore, likely with no radio (but, fortunately, at least wearing a flotation device on his chest), was putting himself in great danger. It is difficult to believe that someone could be so foolhardy, and I just hoped, as I snapped the photo above, that I had not just taken the last picture of this skier alive.

All of the original image files for this day are available at http://www.flukeshots.net/2010/100807/

11:00 Whale Watch for 7/30/2010

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:22:44 -0400

[Note: Having been placed on the "naturalist disabled list", I was a guest whale watcher aboard the Capt. John & Son IV for this trip.]

Today was a beautifully clear day on the water. The wind had come around towards the un-tropical NE, and visibility was excellent (practically unlimited). There was a gentle (2 foot or less) NE sea, and a slight (1 foot) ESE swell only when out beyond the lee of Cape Cod, which is where we were when watching whales, out beyond the SE edge of Stellwagen Bank. Today we found ourselves in an area with close to a dozen humpback whales, who were surface feeding for a change (unlike most of the trips over the past few weeks, when the whales seemed to be feeding deep below the surface). This did give us a chance to confirm the assumption that, when Cajun (flukeshot above) was feeding on fish with her calf (flukeshot below), the calf was indeed feeding, and not merely "going through the motions".

Humpback calves spend the entire time during their first spring, summer, and fall in Massachusetts closely associated with their moms. However, while their main source of food, especially in the spring, is their mother's milk, during the summer we get to see the calves seemingly doing some chasing around of fish along with their mothers and sometimes with other adults (even as they still spend some time nursing each day), and, by the fall, they do have to be getting pretty good at catching fish, because they ordinarily will be weaned before their first year of life has passed. Because, over the last few weeks, we have seen so little surface feeding going on, it has been difficult to say for sure that we were witnessing the calves progressing towards self-feeding, when we did see them diving along with their feeding mothers, coming back up with them (or just before them) a few minutes later.

However, on this trip, since the whales were able to find prey close to the surface, we could actually observe feeding by the calves (and there were three mom/calf pairs in the area). The image above shows Cajun and her calf surfacing while feeding, and the cropped image below shows the calf's full participation in the maneuver. (A full set of baleen plates can be seen, as well - humpback calves, as baleen whales, don't develop fully erupting "baby teeth" as most mammals do, of course, but they do have to grow a set of baleen plates to feed on schools of fish.)

Another image (below), from a second later in time, shows the youngster's mouth closing, but, more importantly, also shows that the lower jaw is distended, as its throat pleats have opened up like accordion pleats as he/she has engulfed a large quantity of water with (hopefully) a quantity of fish within.

One particularly rewarding part of today's trip involved seeing Salt, the Grand Dame of Massachusetts humpbacks, and her 2010 calf (image of Salt's flukes next to her calf, below). Salt was first seen in Massachusetts in 1976 (which is not, however, a record), but she has been seen in Massachusetts ~every~ year since 1976 (which ~is~ a record). Salt is one special whale - to many Massachusetts naturalists, each whale watch season does not "officially" begin until Salt has been spotted for the first time.

Back in the mid-1970's, when whale watching was still in its infancy, Salt was the first humpback to ever have been given a descriptive name, based on her dorsal fin (see the image showing both sides below), which has a prominent white scar on its leading edge, appearing very much like crusted-on sea salt - hence Salt's name. There is probably not a whale watch naturalist in Massachusetts, regardless of whether it's his/her first season or the "thirty-somethingeth" season, that does not get excited when that distinctive dorsal fin first comes into view.

When Salt was first seen here in 1976, she was probably a young adult, and she gave birth to her first known calf (named Crystal) in 1980. This year she is in "our" waters accompanied by her twelfth calf (named Zelle), and she may now be close to forty years old. As a whale watch naturalist, one of the most frequently asked questions I have been asked (when I hadn't already discussed the topic) is "How long do whales live?". Considering that Salt is probably getting close to forty (and considering the fact that she likely has not gone through menopause yet), it is easy to believe that a commonly given estimate for whale life span of fifty-to-seventy years does not seem unreasonable - very possibly, large baleen whales have a life span similar to that of humans (at least before the "Age of Medicine"). Salt does certainly ~seem~ older now - older whales gradually develop arthritic spinal columns, and Salt's sounding dives, while still absolutely incredibly and unforgettably graceful, have gradually become seemingly stiffer and definitely somewhat slower over the years.

Speaking personally (but I am certain that this thought must have been realized by others), it is difficult to accept the fact that there ~will~ someday be a whale watch season when Salt, with all her majesty and beauty, will no longer grace Massachusetts waters.

One of the other females we watched on today's trip (who has also had a number of calves - she was here with her eighth calf during last season) is a real survivor named Glo, first seen here in 1984. Glo's tail flukes (image above) are nearly instantly recognizable from above or from below (they're almost all black below) simply by their shape alone - she likely suffered a collision with a boat many years ago, and she is missing much of her left tail fluke as a result. Nonetheless, she not only has survived, using her tail flukes to migrate back and forth between New England and the Caribbean every year, she can also still employ her tail flukes very effectively for "kick feeding" (and that's what she is doing in the above image - slapping her tail flukes against the water surface to stun, confuse, or otherwise somehow aid feeding upon schools of fish).

On our way back to Plymouth, we passed (and had a good view of) a northbound tug pulling a barge, heading towards Boston from the Cape Cod Canal (that's the smokestack at the power plant near the E end of the Canal, about 15 miles away in Sandwich, in the left background in the telephoto image above). Fortunately, the path from the Canal to Boston Harbor, close to the South Shore of Massachusetts, does not usually have as many whales present as further offshore (although this is not always true, and, during some seasons, there can be significant numbers of right whales there during the late winter and early spring).

All of the original image files for this day are available at http://www.flukeshots.net/2010/100730/

9:00 Whale Watch for 7/23/2010

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:24:08 -0400

[Note: Having been placed on the "naturalist disabled list", I was a guest whale watcher aboard the Capt. John & Son IV for this trip.]

HEY, YOU !!! ...

... GET OFF ...

... MY BUOY !!!

After leaving Plymouth Harbor (and the gull wars going on there - <g>), we headed ENE diagonally across and out of Cape Cod Bay, and into southern Massachusetts Bay, on our way to the E side of Stellwagen Bank, where we saw found four species of cetaceans. We were fortunate to see a half dozen Atlantic white-sided dolphins,

two or three minke whales,

a large finback whale,

and eight humpback whales, including Alphorn (flukeshot shown below), Milkweed, Pele, Cajun and her calf, Nile, Barb, and Scratch.

We spent most of our actual whale watching time with the humpbacks (although the closest whale turned out to be a minke that briefly went under the boat from one side to the other before moving off). For a time we followed Nile and Barb as they slowly swam together in a generally easterly direction, while Scratch appeared to be subsurface feeding by herself not too far away. Then, as we have seen often over the past few weeks, Cajun (flukeshot shown below), Milkweed, Pele, and Alphorn were observed seemingly subsurface feeding as an organized squadron, although Cajun's calf did not seem to participate in the feeding during the time on this particular trip.

It was a basically a fairly calm overcast day with light WSW winds, and everyone aboard the Capt. John & Son IV enjoyed a pleasant time offshore in the company of a number of the whales that call the southern Gulf of Maine (the name for the waters between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia) their home during our warmer months.

All of the original image files for this day are available at http://www.flukeshots.net/2010/100723/

9:00 and 2:00 Whale Watches for 7/8/2010

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 22:48:57 -0400

Today was a very "summery" day on the water. The sky was mostly free of clouds, but the warm air was full of moisture, making for hazy viewing conditions - fortunately, though, the "patchy fog" that NOAA had predicted never materialized on our way to or from the whales, and we were able to see for at least several miles all day long, especially in the PM. The SSE wind increased from mild to moderate during the day, and the seas ranged from about a foot or so in the AM to as much as three feet in the PM.

On the AM trip we saw what appeared to be both newer vessels (fellow whale watch boats) and older (a very pretty schooner) in the vicinity of the whales. While we do on occasion see larger sailing vessels (probably most often the Spirit of Massachusetts or the Harvey Gamage) in the vicinity of the whales, this schooner turned out to be the Lady Maryland (see above), and is actually only about a decade older than the whale watch boat shown in the same picture (which, by the way, was not as close to the Lady Maryland as the cropped photo, taken through a telephoto lens, might suggest). The Lady Maryland is used as a sail training vessel by the Living Classrooms Foundation of Baltimore.

On both trips we headed out on the Capt. John & Son IV to what has been our "usual" whale watch area as of late, just a bit N of the SE corner of Stellwagen Bank. There we found several humpback whales, including many of the same whales we have been observing pretty regularly for the past few weeks. On both trips the adults seemed to be occupied with subsurface feeding, while the calves (who don't tend to hold their breath as long as the adults) seemed to vary between joining the adults on portions of their feeding dives and "hanging around" up above, waiting for their moms to return to the surface with the other adults.

On the AM trip we found two groups of whales not far apart. We tended to concentrate on watching the group of Cajun and calf, Pele, Milkweed, and Percussion, but we also kept an eye on a group consisting of Tear, Alphorn, and an unidentified mother/calf pair nearby. Most of the whales we could identify were the ones we have been observing in this general area for several weeks, so it was nice to see what seemed like "our old friends" once again. On the other hand, this was the first time this season that I have knowingly seen Tear, a large male first seen in our area in 1990 (and it's always a pleasant surprise to see any whale, for the first time in the current season, that has not been seen since a previous seasons). Tear (see flukeshot above) happens to have one of the whitest tail flukes in our Massachusetts humpback population.

On the PM trip we had a brief look at a minke whale not far from the SW corner of the Bank on our way out to the SE corner, where we found that some of the whales we had seen in the AM as two groups were now spread out a bit over a larger area, although most of the behaviors (at least what could be seen at the surface) were similar to what we witnessed in the morning. We found Cajun and her calf once again, but this time they were not associated with any other whales. Alphorn was spotted not too far away, apparently feeding along with a mother/calf pair (very possibly the same unidentified mom/calf pair he was with on our AM trip). We did get to watch a few nice breaches (one shown above) from what might have been two different nearby whales.

In between our two trips today I did have a pleasant surprise waiting for me at the Capt. John ticket booth, where several fellow Capt. John people presented me with a cake (with a whale's tail flukes on it - see below) to wish me luck, since today's whale watch trips may be my last as a naturalist (at least for quite a while), as I have to "go on the disabled list" for some time due to health reasons (a bum hip that may need replacement). I do still hope to get out whale watching every once in a while, but it would be as a passenger (not as the trip's naturalist), when I can choose to sail only on calm days and when I can sit down as much as I'd like to or need to while traveling to and from the whales. Having been a whale watcher since the mid-1970's, and a whale watch naturalist since 1980, this does represent a huge change in my life, since whales wave been such a large part of my life for 30-plus years now. However, I am pleased to report that I was also presented at the ticket booth with the gift of a very nice T-shirt with a detailed map of Cape Cod and Massachusetts Bays and the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary on it, so that I'll still be able to find my way out to the whales and back. I will miss being a whale watch naturalist, though...

All of the original image files for this day are available at http://www.flukeshots.net/2010/100708/

9:00 and 2:00 Whale Watches for 7/3/2010

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 23:31:52 -0400

Once again, we headed to the SE portion of Stellwagen Bank, where for many a day now we have been watching mostly the same group of humpback whales. Every whale watch season is different from every other one, and, at least so far, this season is proving to be a somewhat difficult one (although we do still have a 100% success rate so far this season). While we did get off to a good start early this year, since then there has seemed to be a shortage of sand lance, the small fish that is the staple food of Massachusetts humpback, finback, and minke whales. As a result, we have been seeing fewer humpback whales lately, and the number of finback whales seen has been very low all season long. But, we have still been very fortunate that a number of humpbacks have been "making do" with the apparently somewhat reduced amount of food still available on and around the SE corner of Stellwagen Bank.

On both trips today we observed several humpback whales, as well as having brief looks at a few Atlantic white-sided dolphins in the AM and a minke whale in the PM. The humpbacks in our whale watching area included "the usual suspects" - Cajun and her calf, Milkweed, Pele, and Alphorn, who have often been together, or at least in the vicinity of each other, for some time now. In a way, it might seem to be less interesting to see a smaller variety of individual whales day after day, but it has actually been really neat to watch these animals spending time with each other, and interacting with each other, on a regular basis. I wonder if Cajun's calf will grow up with a special fondness for "Uncle Alphorn", for example (Alphorn, at 27 years old, is the oldest of this group of whales, while Cajun, the calf's mom, is only 12 years old in comparison).

One of the nicest things we saw today occurred on the PM trip, when we saw Milkweed doing some kick feeding (below). Not only is this an interesting behavior to watch, we have not seen it much lately, likely due to lack of surface food, and so part of the joy in seeing it comes from the realization that some surface sand lance might be starting to show up again.

Kick feeding is an intriguing humpback behavior that has been seen in Massachusetts humpbacks only for the last 15 to 20 years or so (I do not remember the exact year when it was first observed) - interestingly, it was never seen in Massachusetts humpback whales back in the 1970's and 1980's. When kick feeding, a humpback will slap its tail flukes down on the water surface, apparently over a school of sand lance, and will then dive below the spot where it "kicked" and rise again, scooping up the fish at that spot that may possibly have been percussively stunned or otherwise confused. The "kick" also creates a lot of bubbles in the water, similar to what is produced during humpback bubble cloud feeding, and that may also add to the confusion. Despite what I've described here, though, what we actually know for sure about kick feeding is still a bit limited.

The appearance of kick feeding is somewhat like lob tailing, but the tail flukes are not lifted as high (nor is the dorsal side of the flukes ever slapped down, which does sometimes occur in lob tailing). Certainly the effect on the water's surface is different from what the flukes do (or don't do) to the surface when a whale simply goes on a sounding dive (below).

If the humpback actions above, from the PM trip, were the nicest behavior to see for the day, then the least pleasant actions - of human behavior in this case - were observed on the AM trip, when we saw a sport fishing boat, hoping to snag a tuna, not at all concerned if it snagged a humpback whale instead. We were watching Cajun, Alphorn, Milkweed, and Pele diving for food, while Cajun's calf remained "hanging around" at the surface. At the time, the tuna boat had been slowly dragging "squid gear" (an array of very brightly colored hooked soft plastic lures) across the surface of the water. At one point, the path of the tuna boat came within about 25 feet of the calf (see the photos below, showing the location of the calf and the location of the gear), all the while very possibly being directly above the four feeding adult humpbacks (see the third photo below of some of them surfacing near the calf shortly afterward, with Cajun surfacing right next to her calf).

It is unlikely that the operator of the tuna boat could have been unaware of the whales he was endangering. First, he had been moving quite slowly, so it was unlikely that he never saw that there were whales in the area. Then, he was carrying out this boneheaded maneuver next to a stopped whale watch boat (and nothing looks more like a dedicated whale watch vessel than does the Tails of the Sea). Finally, while the four adult whales did dive before the tuna boat reached that spot, the calf was still quite obviously at the surface almost directly in the tuna boat's path (just slightly - about 25 feet - to the left of its path). The boat ~never~ slowed further, ~nor~ did it turn (to its right) away from the calf, ~nor~ did it come to a stop (which is what would legally - and intelligently - have been the proper response). The boat just kept on dragging its hooked gear right alongside the young whale so close by at the surface.

As it turned out, we did have two US Coast Guard Auxiliary members on board for that trip (and we do indeed have USCG Auxiliary people on board periodically on some whale watch trips, spot-checking our actions around the whales and, I would suppose, watching other boats around the whales, too). I did email my (full-size) photos of the incident to one of the Auxiliary members who did provide me with his email address, but, upon checking with his superior, he emailed me back, saying he was told that, since he himself could not provide a videotape that he personally had taken of the incident, no formal action would be taken. (I would have hoped that at least a polite warning would have been in order...)

Is there any doubt as to which species has fully earned the title of "The Most Dangerous Species on This Planet"? Methinks not.

All of the original image files for this day are available at http://www.flukeshots.net/2010/100703/

11:00 Whale Watch for 7/2/2010

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:53:11 -0400

For the 11:00 trip today on the Capt. John & Son IV, we headed out of Plymouth Harbor bound for an area a bit N of the SE corner of Stellwagen Bank. There we watched nine to ten humpback whales apparently deep feeding, but (fortunately, and unlike some recent trips) staying below the surface for only a few minutes at a time. We were able to identify Pele, Alphorn, Anchor, Division, and Cajun (see above flukeshot) and her calf.

Sometimes humpback whales will come over to a boat and give a close approach, a "close encounter of the whale kind" (see Cajun's dorsal fin image, above). There seem to be certain individual whales who do this more than others (and Roswell comes to mind as a prime example of this), but often it is the mother and calf pairs that may choose to approach a boat. The mother whales may likely be very protective of their calves, but the calves may have unbridled curiosity that can overcome this, and a boat very still in the water may sometimes be rewarded with a mother/calf close approach (see Cajun's calf's flukes, below).

Recently, we have noticed that Cajun and her calf may often treat whale watchers with a friendly close approach, typically going under the boat from one side to the other before then starting to move off. Although some mother/calf pairs may stay with a boat for a while, it seems to be Cajun's "style" to make close approaches with her calf frequently but briefly, as we saw once again today (that's Cajun to the left and her calf to the right, in the image below).

9:00 and 2:00 Whale Watches for 7/1/2010

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:51:14 -0400

For both whale watches today we headed out to our "usual" spot, the general area where we've been over most of the trips as of late, just a bit N of the SE corner of Stellwagen Bank. We had a beautiful day, as far as the weather went, although the seas, at about three feet or so from the NW on the AM trip, may have been a little more than a few of the morning passengers liked - however, on the PM trip the wind and the seas subsided quite a bit - visibility was certainly excellent all day.

Even before we left the dock for the AM trip, we had an interesting "feeding frenzy" going on for a few minutes right next to the boat - there were quite a few terns, probably from Plymouth Beach, swooping and diving to catch small fish at the surface of the water (see the images above), right in Plymouth Harbor.

On both trips we saw all humpback whales (except for one brief look at a minke whale on the PM trip). Unfortunately for us (and for the whales, too), the sand lance seemed to be quite deep below the surface, and all of the whales were apparently diving deep and certainly staying for a long time below the surface before returning for just a few breaths (above) before diving again.

We were able to identify Pele (both trips), Percussion (dorsal fin and flukes above) (both trips), Alphorn (PM trip), Giraffe and her calf (PM trip), and Hancock (left, below) and Venom (right, below) (PM trip).

9:00 and 2:00 Whale Watches for 6/26/2010

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 23:26:01 -0400

One of the interesting aspects of whale watching involves the opportunity to see interesting vessels throughout each trip, whether offshore on Stellwagen Bank, or on the way to or from the whales, or even just in the harbor. For example, for this weekend there was one additional "tall ship" in Plymouth Harbor (i.e., in addition to Plymouth's resident "tall ship", the Mayflower II). As we passed the State Pier on our way to and from the Town Pier where the Capt. John whale watch boats normally dock, our passengers had a good look at a visiting brig called the Westward. (In the image above, the Westward can be seen tied up to the State Pier, with the bow and foremast of the Mayflower II in the background.)

For both the AM and PM whale watches today the Tails of the Sea headed out to the E of Stellwagen Bank (probably still within the Stellwagen Bank national Marine Sanctuary, but out beyond the Bank itself). We saw mostly humpback whales who seemed to be feeding down towards the bottom, meaning that we saw them diving for somewhat longer periods of time, often taking fewer breaths at the surface before diving as well. When the prey (likely sand lance, a.k.a. "sand eels") is located closer to the bottom, it is more difficult for both whales and humans (i.e., the whales have to work harder at finding and catching the fish, and we humans have to be more patient while waiting for whales to surface).

On the AM trip, the first whale we encountered out to the E was a humpback named Rocker (above). For me, this was the first time I've seen Rocker this season, so it was nice to once again see an old friend.

We continued further E to find two groups of deep feeding humpbacks, a pair that included Ampersand (above) (also not seen by me since last season) and an unidentified whale, and a group of five that included Cajun and her calf, Milkweed, Pele, and one other unidentified critter. We did get to see a couple of breaches that probably no one was able to capture photographically, since each came unexpectedly and was not repeated. (It's always a lot easier to capture a breach when it's a second or succeeding breach following shortly after a first breach.)

We did at one point have a chance to observe Cajun's calf's left tail fluke as it rolled over not far from us a couple of times (see the image above). On the calf's flukes we were able to observe at close range an occasionally seen interesting color effect - there were some amber colored areas visible (mostly in the white areas, but the amber coloring also can be found, although less obviously so, in the darker areas as well). These amber patches represent a thin film of diatoms - microscopic single-celled algae organisms that can sometimes be found clinging to the skin of whales (although they are not parasitic, since they carry out photosynthesis for their food, just like free-swimming diatoms do). In some areas the film can even be seen as having been scraped off by contact with other surfaces (probably the surface of the calf's mother, who is often in such close proximity).

On the PM trip, we were not able to watch, either at close range or for very long, the first whales we spotted. It turned out that the first whales we saw, a couple miles away, were also the first ones spotted by a couple of Gloucester whale watch boats traversing the entire length of Stellwagen Bank (since there have been very few whales closer to their port at the N end of Stellwagen). Since the two North Shore boats were such a long way from home, with not much time to watch whales without running very late, our captain, speaking to their two captains over the radio, offered to let them stop searching and watch those whales, while we went off looking further for other whales. (While there did seem to be a couple of small groups of humpbacks for those two boats to watch, whale watch boats are not supposed to "gang up on" or otherwise "crowd" the whales, so we elected to continue on.)

We headed further to the SE, where our boat joined with a Provincetown boat to watch several scattered humpbacks deep feeding there. We spent much of our time with a humpback named Alphorn (named for the Matterhorn), who is (unfortunately) instantly recognizable due to a healed wound behind its dorsal fin (above), as well as by its distinctive left and right tail fluke markings (below), which are not much like the approximate mirror images that most humpbacks have for their overall fluke markings. Alphorn seemed quite content to come to the surface close to us several times while we were stopped while waiting for each appearance, which was the high point on our trip.

I mentioned above how the captains of the whale watch boats talk to each other on the radio. This communication is very important, even though it is unheard by whale watch passengers. Not only does such radio traffic help each boat locate whales (useful for the humans on each boat), it also helps each captain coordinate the motion of his/her boat with that of the other boats, to prevent adverse pressure on whales from multiple boats - and anything that prevents "ganging up on" or otherwise "crowding" the whales is, of course, good for the whales. The image below shows another whale watch boat finishing watching a couple of whales before "handing them off" to our boat and then going off to look at the whales we had just left. Please note that the image is from a cropped photograph taken with a telephoto lens, and that we were therefore not as close to the other boat as a first glance at the image might make it seem. Please also note that the other boat was totally stopped in the water, which is absolutely essential when whales are so close to any boat.

9:00 Whale Watch for 6/20/2010

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 16:50:30 -0400

All of the ~adult~ whales we saw on this morning's trip aboard the Tales of the Sea seemed to be feeding. I say "seemed to be" because we couldn't actually see the feeding going on. Sometimes we do see whales feeding at or close to the surface, where the feeding behaviors and sometimes the prey animals themselves can be observed. The number one prey species for most of the whales we see in Massachusetts is a small fish called sand lance, which is a very mobile small fish - besides moving from place to place horizontally, sand lance can sometimes be found right at the surface, but they can also be found close to the bottom, even burrowing into the very sand on the bottom (whence the name "sand lance"). On this morning's trip, we observed a number of adult humpback whales apparently feeding at a couple of locations over Stellwagen Bank where the sand lance may have been close to the bottom.

When sand lance are close to the surface, humpbacks do not have to dive deep to reach them - they typically dive just deep enough to get below the fish in order to drive them toward the surface (which is, of course, an effective barrier that fish cannot flee across very far). Surface sand lance make for easy feeding for the whales - they don't have to dive very deep or for very long - and it also makes for easy observing for whale watchers - we can easily see much of what is going on. However, when sand lance are located deeper in the water column, the whales have to "commute" longer distances to find them and to feed on them, and we have to be content with observing the whales surfacing less frequently, taking fewer breaths, diving for longer periods, and coming up often further away from where they first dove.

On today's trip, most of the whales we saw were taking fewer breaths at the surface, taking longer dives, and coming back up at less predictable locations - therefore, we assume that the whales were feeding on deep sand lance - but, not all whales were feeding today as we watched them. We did see Nile and a minke whale near the SW corner of Stellwagen Bank, apparently deep feeding, and out further to the NE, close to the E side of Stellwagen, we did see Grackle, Sloop, Cajun, Perseid, Milkweed, and Pele, also apparently deed feeding. However, the two calves that we saw (Cajun's and Perseid's) did not seem to be feeding. Perseid's calf seemed to be quietly spending much of its time waiting at the surface while its mom was feeding below, but Cajun's calf, in contrast, spent some of its time at the surface literally ~above~ the surface - Cajun's calf launched itself quite often into the air with chin-slap breaches and with spinning-head breaches, sometimes not very far from our boat. Although we have seen Cajun's calf apparently feeding alongside its mom on previous trips, on this trip the calf seemed to have breaching, and not food, on its mind, and our passengers were likely not disappointed in the calf's choice.