Whale Watching Trip June 26, 2010

11 am Whale Watch Trip - Joanne

We left Plymouth Harbor with mostly cloudy skies, light west-southwest winds and relatively calm seas offshore. We traveled across the southern edge of Stellwagen Bank to the SE corner where we found half a dozen humpback whales.

We had a group of 4 humpbacks in association, including: Cajun+calf, Pele, and Milkweed. We had two other singles nearby and a few more whales farther to our south. This group of whales has formed a longer term association and have been seen together quite a bit over the last few weeks.

The adults appeared to be deep feeding, while the calf spent more time at the surface, at one point coming right over and circling our boat as we waited for the whales. This calf was born in the warm waters of the Caribbean this past winter and when just a few weeks old, Cajun started migrating with her calf to the northern latitude feeding and nursery grounds. The calf will spend ~9-12 months with Cajun, then be on its own. The gestation for humpback whales is 12 months. Overall, a beautiful day offshore in the company of endangered whales!

Whale Watching Trip June 23, 2010

9 am Whale Watching Trip - Joanne

On Wednesday, June 23, we traveled out of Plymouth Harbor on the Tails of the Sea for our 9 AM whale watch with light winds and mostly clear skies. Once offshore, we had a slight swell from the SE, along with a 2 ft. chop.

We traveled to the SE corner of Stellwagen Bank, where we came across several humpback whales and a small pod of Atlantic White Sided Dolphins. We were the first boat to arrive on Wednesday morning and for the first 5 minutes got to witness surface feeding, with bubble clouds and kicks and open mouths. Quickly, things changed and the whales started searching for food and exhibiting bottom feeding behavior.

The humpback whales broke off into two groups: Perseid and calf headed one direction, while Cajun and calf, Milkweed and Pele headed another. The dolphins were spread between them all, occasionally leaping out of the water.

We spent some time with Perseid and her calf before leaving them to take our final looks at the other group. One of the whales jumped clear out of the water, giving us a full spinning breach. It then followed with a tail breach.

Birds seen, included: greater and sooty shearwaters, Wilson's storm petrels, common and roseate terns, laughing gulls.

Whale seen, included: humpbacks and atlantic white sided dolphin

Humpbacks Identified, included: Perseid + calf, Cajun + calf, Milkweed and Pele.

2 pm Whale Watch Trip - Joanne

On the afternoon trip (at 2PM) on Wednesday, June 23 aboard the Tails of the Sea, we headed to the same area we were in the morning. The only difference was we had even less wind and near glass calm seas.

At the SE corner of Stellwagen Bank, we came across a group of 3 humpback whales logging (resting). This group included Twister and Touche. As the trio logged, a fourth whale approached. This whale, a mature female named Palette, formed an association with Twister and they swam side by side to the west, while the remaining two gave our passengers a curious boat approach, swimming right over to us and under our bow.

We then headed southeast to a large group of humpbacks, which included Perseid and calf, Cajun and calf, Milkweed and Pele. This group was exhibiting behavior indicative of bottom feeding. The calves were spending a lot of time at the surface, sometimes curious of the boat. Two more whales came in from the east and joined this group, they included Ivory and Wyoming. All 8 of these whales formed an association, fluking together next to our boat.

In addition to the humpbacks, we saw a few minke whales and a grey seal.

Birds seen, included: greater shearwaters, Wilson's storm petrels, laughing gulls, common and roseate terns, laughing gulls.

Whales seen, included: humpbacks and minkes

Humpback whales identified, included: Perseid + calf, Cajun + calf, Milkweed, Pele, Touche, Twister, Palette, Ivory, Wyoming

Other: butterflies and dragonflies

Whale Watching Trip June 22, 2010

2 pm Whale Watch Trip - Joanne

We traveled out of Plymouth Harbor aboard the Tails of the Sea for the 2 PM whale watch with mostly clear skies, light winds, and calm seas. We headed to the SE corner of Stellwagen Bank, where we came across several endangered humpback whales.

We had a large group of whales associated with one another, which included a few whales who appeared to be feeding deeper in the water, while the two calves stayed near the surface with a whale named Tracer. This trio, which also included Perseid's 10 calf and Cajun's 10 calf, was very active with spyhops and rolling around. This trio was never too far from the other whales, which included the mothers of the calves.

While the group of 6 whales (Cajun+, Perseid+, Milkweed, and Pele) have been consistently sighted together and/or near each other in this area, we had a few different whales move through, including: Alphorn, Citation, Draco, and Snowplow.

Birds seen, included: greater and sooty shearwaters, Wilson's storm petrels, laughing and herring gulls, roseate and common terns

Whales seen, included: humpback whales

Humpbacks identified, included: Draco, Citation, Alphorn, Tracer, Pele, Snowplow, Perseid+, Cajun +, Milkweed

Whale Watching Trip June 21, 2010

9 am Whale Watch Trip - Lauren

We had a gorgeous sunny day offshore this morning with barely a breeze at all which made for glasslike sea conditions, and there was no swell at all. Our first sighting was of a minke whale just traveling through and did not stay with us very long.

The larger whales were hard to find this morning. Apparently the whales were all tuckered out from a long weekend! We finally came across Nile, who was having a very lazy day and logging at the surface. Although she was not very active we got some great looks at her as she stayed just below the surface very close to the boat. Everyone got a really great look at this beautiful whale, and got to see her big long flippers, hear her loud excehalation as she came to the surface to breath, and her great big tail.

We left Nile in search of other whales, but were only able to find another shy minke traveling by. We were however lucky enough to find a gray seal! This was a great treat to see this little guy, as we do not see seals all too often. He was finishing up his lunch as we got there, which appeated to possibly be a dogfish. Then he swam on his back checking us out! He was very cute, and a great way to end our trip.

2 pm Whale Watch Trip - Krill and Tiffany

We headed off shore on a beautiful summers day to the east side of Stellwagen Bank. Winds were almost nonexistent but we did pick up a one foot easterly swell as we cleared the hook of Cape Cod.

On our way offshore, we came across a small concentration of 10 to 15 grey seals. This was the most seals Krill has ever seen on any one individual whale watch. These seals were probably just looking for fish just like the whales that we were hoping to find. As we continued east, we started to see more seabirds, Wilson's storm petrel and the sooty shearwater.

Here and there we passed a minke whale but we kept on moving for we had reports of a small cluster of humpback whales to the east of us. When we arrived in this area, we found a small group of 6 humpback whales that were feeding together. We were able to identify all the individuals that made up this temporary grouping and they included two mother and calf pairs. We were able to ID Cajun and calf, Perseid and calf. We also had two adults in this group including Pele and Milkweed.

The adults seemed to be feeding deep for they would surface explosively as they charged back up to the water's surface. Cajun's calf was keeping a close eye on its mom, but Perseid's calf was a bit more adventurous as the calf come over to the boat and gave us a close approach. The calf came right up to the boat and seemed to be checking out the situation. As this young animal made its way to the bow or front of the boat, it did a beautiful barrel roll id a barrel roll within 5 feet from the pulpit.

Close to the end of our whale watch, we noticed that the group had separated a bit. Perseid and her calf surfaced a few hundred feet away from the remaining group of 4 humpbacks. But in less than 10 minutes, Perseid and calf once again rejoined this group of feeding whales.

Our last looks of the whales were of them all swimming away together. What a fabulous day of whale watching and what a special look at an amazing calf.

Whale Watching Trip June 20, 2010

Whale Watch Trip - Fred

All of the 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 makes 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 left the surface.

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 deeper 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. 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 at the surface while its mom was feeding below, but Cajun's calf, in contrast, spent some of its time at the surface actually ~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.

2pm Whale Watch - Leah

Woohoo!! We had a roller-coaster of a ride today. It was very sunny and HOT as we were leaving the dock today and once we got passed the Gurnet light, it seemed like we passed through a weather portal. We started to get a little fog off in the distance, it didn't affect our visibility to badly but it kept us from seeing Provincetown. Also the clouds accumulated quickly and we started to see a few flashes of lightening and heard some thunder while out there. Which is not at all frightening when you are fairly close to the highest point on a boat in the middle of the water. The wind also started to pick up while we were out there.

But the weather did not upset our success of seeing whales. Once we got to the bank we had a group of six of seven humpback whales. We had two mother calf pairs, Perseid and Cajun and their calves. We also had Milkweed and Pele. The two calves in this group were being particularly feisty, Cajun's calf was breaching when we were arriving and Perseid's calf was rolling and flipper slapping the entire time we were watching them. I can't imagine how dizzy that calf was by the end, but kids will be kids.

Cajun's calf eventually joined in the fun of rolling and flipper slapping for a little while, but then continued diving a long with the other adult whales. They were having the equivalent kind of fun that a child has when they spin around over and over in an office chair. The wind was also continuing to increase as we were getting ready to leave which added to the roller-coaster ride of trying to get back to Plymouth. We were knocked around a little bit, and got a little wet but after a little traveling we were safe and clear of the wild waves. I've been getting spoiled with having calm water days I forgot just how much fun a change in weather can make the water.

This trip was rated two flippers up!!!!

Whale Watching Trip June 19, 2010

9 am Whale Watch Trip (charter) - Leah

On today's 9am Charter we welcomed aboard Girl Scout troops from the Dartmouth Service Unit. We had one of the most beautiful days out there on the water. There was not a cloud in the sky and the sea was flat calm. We got out there and immediately found a finback whale, it came up to the surface a few times so we could get some good looks and some pictures, then it dove and we didn't see it again till the end of the trip when we were on our way back into the dock. As soon as we left the finback, we found a minke and it did the same thing the finback did, it surfaced a few times, then dove and we didn't see it again.

About ten minutes after we moved off the minke we found a small group of four or five humpbacks. We had a mother and calf pair, which was Cajun and calf. We also had Pele, Palette and an unidentified whale which may have been another calf. These whales were traveling parallel to our boat then switched directions and came right towards us. They swam right under the boat, came up on the other side of the boat and then started breaching over and over again.

I think the two that breached the most were Cajun and her calf. Along with the whales we were watching we had a lot off in the distance all around our boat. There were a lot of breachers and flipperslappers off in the distance that we didn't have enough time to see but there were plenty of whales all over the place today. What a great day to be out on the water today.

2 pm Whale Watch Trip - Fred

On the 2:00 trip today aboard the Tails of the Sea we visited an area I've not been to much during this season (at least so far). Generally during this spring we've been somewhere on or at least near the S end of Stellwagen Bank. However, on this afternoon's whale watch we tried our luck about a third the way up the W side of the Bank, close to the original location of the BE Buoy.

(The BE Buoy, which marks the "median strip" between the inbound and outbound shipping lanes in and out of Boston as they pass over Stellwagen Bank, was moved a few miles further N a couple of years ago, to keep the shipping lanes further away from whale concentrations - where we were on this trip was close to where the buoy used to be situated - note, in the photo above, the large outbound ship transiting a few miles N of the humpback shown breaching - it was not too many years ago when such ships traveled across Stellwagen quite close to where this whale was located today.)

Visibility was excellent under a sunny sky, although an increasing wind from the SSW caused the seas to build to about 3 feet or so, making for somewhat sloppy conditions on the water. We spent most of out time with a humpback whale named Pitcher, who breached, tail breached, flippered, lob tailed, and generally made himself/herself as obvious as possible while we were nearby.

Passengers sometimes ask why whales do such active behaviors as breaching, etc. The answer, of course, has to be that we don't really know - who can know what is going on in a humpback whale's large and anatomically complex brain? Suggested reasons include the "common" ones (play, exercise, communication, aggression, etc.) as well as the perhaps "less likely" reasons (knocking barnacles off, helping to digest food, scratching an itch, etc.) - who can say, though? It may possibly be one of these reasons - or it may be something we haven't thought of yet - or it may likely be different reasons at different times - but, again, who can say?

Sometimes such dramatic displays are exhibited by one whale, while at other times multiple whales may be involved (but, even then, we can't even know if multiple whales are affecting each other, or if they are each being active for their own private purposes. (It does seem as if, when humpbacks meet, and when they separate, they sometimes do something "splashy".) On this particular trip, one passenger asked me on the way back to port if Pitcher "was showing off for us". My answer had to be - you guessed it - "I don't know". My hunch is that, at least most of the time, humpbacks (especially) just love being alive, and like to express their "Joie de Vivre" on occasion in very dramatic displays.

Herman Melville, who wrote "Moby Dick" about sperm whales and their human hunters, did in fact know a lot about whales, having served himself on whaling vessels. At one point in "Moby Dick", Melville remarked that humpback whales seem to be "the most lighthearted and gamesome of all the whales". Well, I think that Herman Melville was likely quite correct, and I tend to think that the passengers aboard our whale watch vessel this afternoon would probably agree as well.

Whale Watching Trip June 18, 2010

9 am Whale Watch Trip - Krill

We headed offshore to the mid part of Stellwagen Bank. Visibility was good and the sea state was very low. Ideal conditions for sighting whales offshore. We found our first sighting very close to the shipping channels that cut right across Stellwagen Bank and the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Many large commercial vessels use these channels as they move in and out of Boston Harbor.

This pair was very active as we approached for we could see big splashes in the distance. Both whales were flipper slapping as they rolled on their sides and lifted the long white flipper out of the water. The whales would then smash the flipper on the water creating a large plume of water.

As we moved closer to this pair, they seemed to settle down and switched into a traveling behavior as they slowly moved south. We were able to identify both individuals in this pair. The whale with a hooked dorsal fin was a whale named Nile and the second whale was Soot. Nile has a ventral tail pattern where the majority of the tail is black. But there are white areas close to the tips of each fluke and there is a wonderful vertical line on the left side. Soot has a completely dark ventral tail with a few distinctive whale lines and marks.

As we followed this pair, they slowly moved away from each other as they continued to head south. Associations in large baleen whales, like humpback whales, are temporary and typically last only a few hours at the best. The only long-term association is that between the mother and calf. This is probably due to the fact that these animals need to eat such large quantities each and every day.

The Son IV moved into this area to get a look at Nile, so we headed south in search of additional sightings. On the SW corner of Stellwagen Bank, we found a humpback whale named Grackle who was feeding deep beneath the water's surface. Grackle was blowing bubbles to create a net-like structure that acted as a barrior to the fish. The bait must have been deep for it was obvious that Grackle was lunging prior to coming up to the surface to breathe.

A tuna boat moved very quickly into our area and started to troll for giant bluefin tuna right where Grackle was feeding. Some fishermen assume that areas where whales are feeding are productive areas that might also attract bluefin tuna. However, fishing close to whales is a dangerous habit for both the whale and the fishermen. Whales can get caught in the fishing line or snagged on the fishing lures as the boat passes too close.