Whale Watching Trip July 10, 2010

9 am Whale Watch Trip - Joanne

We left Plymouth Harbor with partly cloudy skies, humidity, relatively good visibility and a 2-3 ft sea offshore. The threat of thunderstorms was looming in the forecast and sky. We traveled across southern Stellwagen Bank to the eastern edge where we found 2 dozen minke whales, a pod of 12-15 Atlantic White-Sided Dolphins and a dozen surface feeding humpback whales.

We began with a cow/calf pair--Firefly and her calf. Firefly was blowing a bubble cloud (single burst of bubbles in a cloud formation) and then surfacing through with her mouth closed before she reached the surface. Her calf stayed just outside the bubbles each time. Firefly has a mostly black tail fluke with some white marks, one that resembles a firefly. She is also missing her left fluke tip.

We then moved to another group of whales to our north, but all of the whales were on the move in search mode and forming new associations. We ended up watching a group of 5 whales bubble net feeding together. This group was forming a spiral of bubbles, starting with fine bubbles and ending with big columns. ALL five whales surfaced with their mouths wide open in near perfect unison, all of them dragging at the surface before repeating the process. This group included Alphorn, Venom, Hancock, Tear and a whale yet to be identified. It was incredible to see this group of 5 repeatedly feeding in the same format, with Hancock always leading the dives and surfacings.

Firefly and calf continued to feed nearby and the minkes were charging all around. Mirror then came through and joined Alphorn and the remaining whales continued to feed in close proximity to each other. It was a terrific trip with surfacing feed! Shearwaters, petrels and gulls were quite numerous and associated with the feeding whales.

2 PM Whale Watch - Joanne

We left Plymouth Harbor after a heavy but quick downpour came through as we boarded our passengers. We had an increasing wind and developing swell offshore. We traveled to the eastern edge of Stellwagen Bank and spent time with a large group of humpback whales. Within a few boat lengths, we had a trio, a pair and a group of 5 humpbacks--three separate associations.

Milkweed and Ravine were traveling together. Both mature females, Ravine was rescued from an entanglement in fishing gear in 2003, which was initially reported by whale watching boats. The original wounds, which have healed, left her with scars on her caudal peduncle (tailstock) and flukes (tail).

Cajun and calf, Pele, Percussion and a fifth whale yet to be identified were all in a tight association. Associations may last a few minutes, hours or even over days and weeks. Humpbacks are very social animals, even though like all baleen whales we consider them solitary.

Giraffe and calf were also nearby traveling with a third whale. Unlike the morning trip, the whales were not exhibiting surfacing feeding, but did give some indications they were feeding deeper in the water column.

Whale Watching Trip July 9, 2010

9 am Whale Watch Trip - Krill

We headed to the SE corner of Stellwagen Bank and came upon a single humpback whale that was traveling slowly to the SE. We stayed with this individual for a few surfacings, but then decided to continue east in the hopes for finding more whales in a general area.

As we moved to the east, we saw a number of blows off in the distance. As we approached, we realized that we had a small group of humpbacks who were feeding cooperatively. We soon saw that the individuals in this group were the same that had been associating together for the past few weeks. And so we identified Milkweed, Cajun and her calf of this year, Percussion and Alphorn.

Shortly after the adult humpbacks dove beneath the water's surface to feed at depth, Cajun's calf returned to the surface and started to log. The calf just floated at the surface almost looking like a giant cork on the water. But no matter where the calf ended up, the adults would return to the surface very close to this young animal. So it was fun to see the adults charging back to the surface to breath very forcefully, an indication that they had been working hard down below.

At the end of our trip, two other humpbacks were seen to the SE heading in our direction. This pair may have joined our small group of whales, but it was difficult to tell as we headed slowly out of the area to return to Plymouth Harbor. A fabulous day offshore. Great weather and wonderful sightings.

2 pm Whale Watch Trip - Krill

For our afternoon trip, we headed right back into the same area where we were whale watching that morning. To our delight, we found a larger number of humpbacks feeding deep. Many of the humpbacks were individuals we had observed earlier that day during our morning whale watch. But there a few additional animals that we had not seen and two of these whales had very black tails.

As many of the adults were charging throughout the area feeding deep, a few calves were observed spending more time at the surface. These young animals can not hold their breath as long as the adults, so they often return to the surface in anticipation of the adult's return. One calf was very active and started to breach or jump out of the water. This calf first did a spinning head breach and then did a few chin breaches just for good measure.

Lots of activity as a second calf started to get just as excited and active as the first. This calf started to barrel roll and as it did, it would hit its flipper on the water's surface. It was hard to know where to look as whales were popping up all around the boat.

As we headed home from an awesome day of whale watching offshore, captain, crew and passengers were all smiles. Can't beat a day like today!

11 am Whale Watch - Leah

It was another beautiful day out in Plymouth today. We still had our main rock star group of whales out there today, They are still hanging out within reach for us to go see them and still continue to follow them around. However, this time we had Perseid's calf being the active whale.

This calf seemed to be practicing fluking out, it is very cool to watch the calves, this calf was trying over and over to get its tail out of the water. A few times the calf did it correctly and sometimes it wouldn't get it quite right and would end up preforming a small tail slap. Also some of the times the whale was practicing, it would lift its tail to high and then end up flipping over in the water. It was very cute to watch, but that calf was determined to get it right so it continued to practice as much as it could.

Also the calf was splashing around and rolling over and slapping it's flippers around. Hopefully this group of whales will continue to hang around and allow us to see just what kind of things we can learn about this group staying together for such a long period of time.

Whale Watching Trip July 8, 2010

9 am and 2 pm Whale Watch - Fred

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 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 fluke 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 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...

11 am Whale Watch Trip - Leah

Again our usual suspects were out on the water today the same group of whales from the past few days were continuing to stay around for us to follow there progress through the water. It has been rather neat seeing this same group of whales over and over again, being able to see them display different behaviors on all different days.

Unlike the previous day where the calves were rather active they must have been tired from having so much fun. Today they were swimming and following around the parents. The calves, not having the same amount of lung capacity as the adults, would resurface a few times before the rest of the whales. But they were still all around us swimming and enjoying themselves diving and have a relaxing restful day.

Whale Watching Trip July 7, 2010

11 am Whale Watch Trip July 7 - Leah

In my opinion there is no better job than being out on the water watching one of the most majestic whales that lives on earth. We started our trip with an unidentified individual whale that was very curious about us on the boats. This whale gave us beautiful close approaches on both sides of the boat giving all the people on board great looks at the head and body on this animal.

After we moved off of this lone whale, we found the group of six that have been hanging around a lot together on Stellwagen. The adults were doing a lot of diving staying down for about 5 minutes but Cajun's calf of this year stayed at the surface for quite a while giving us lovely looks at all sorts of breaching behaviors. This calf breached many many times giving everyone a great look at just how powerful these animals can be, especially the amount of force that occurs when they splash back down in the water. This calf was so playful in fact it played a little game of bumper whales, all the adults would come up to the surface and the calf would swim into them.

But it was great to see the calf so playful and so active while we were with them.

Whale Watching Trip July 4, 2010

9 and 2 pm Whale Watch Trips - Fred

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 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, 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.

11 am Whale Watch Trip - Krill

It was a fabulous 4th of July offshore. The weather was cool and not too humid. Perfect conditions for sightings out on the waters. As we headed to the west side of Stellwagen Bank, we passed our sister ship, the Tails of the Sea. We were able to get a nice photo that included naturalist Joanne and Captain Dave waving to us on the fly bridge.

After passing the Tails, we picked up our first sighting on the SW corner of the bank. This pair turned out to be a special sighting of a mother and calf humpback whale. A quick look at the size and shape of the dorsal fin allowed us to quickly identify this mom as Orbit. Orbit and her calf of this year were slowly moving through the area.

We left his special pair and kept moving to the east for we had reports of a large concentration of humpback whales that were subsurface feeding. Our first sighting in this area was another very special one. We again had looks at a humpback whale mother and calf pair and the mom turned out to be Salt, the most famous humpback whale in the world.


Salt appeared to be feeding deep while the calf, named Zelle, was spending more time at the surface waiting patiently for Salt to return to the surface. While we watched this pair, we saw three other groupings of humpback whales in this same area.


We counter over 10 humpback whales clustered in the small area to feeding on small schooling fish at depth. With so many other groups of whales in the area, we decided it was time to leave Salt and calf in order to pick up a few more sightings.


Our next and final sighting turned out to include 2 mother and calf pairs. These moms were Cajuna and calf as well as Circuit and calf. Both moms appeared to be feeding deep while the calves spent more time on the water' surface. Fun to see the calves interacting with each other as they patiently wait for mom's return.

Soon it was time to head home. As we were preparing to leave, another of our sister ships, the Capt. Rudy Thomas, joined us offshore. The Capt. Rudy Thomas runs the ferry service from Plymouth to Provincetown. While the ferry boat passengers are enjoying themselves in town, the Capt. Rudy Thomas takes folks in Provincetown on a whale watch off Race Point. We saw Marianne waving to us from the wheelhouse. She is one of our very favority galley girl.


Big smiles from everyone onboard. A great way to celebrate the 4th of July.