9 am and 2 pm whale watches - Meghan, Tobias and Krill
9 am trip:
As we headed offshore on a clear, bright day, we made our way over to Race Point, the tip of Cape Cod. We had seen a humpback breaching in the distance just off the Race, but as we approached the whale settled down and started feeding deep. So we headed back towards Stellwagen Bank to an area where we hoped to find a concentration of whales.
Our next sighting was a pair of humpback whales that were traveling slowly to the northwest. As we watched this pair, we noticed that one animal had a very hooked dorsal fin. As this whale finally lifted it tail (fluke) out of the water giving us a look at the ventral tail pattern, we realized that this was Pitcher. Pitcher has a horizontal, black line on the right side of her fluke. And this makr is key in identifying Pitcher offshore. We are not sure who Pitcher’s companion was, as this whale never fluked out.
There were two sightings of single whales off in the distance. One of theses whales breached off the bow the boat. This was the only activity we could observe from these whales. We were never close enough to get an identification.
Then we spotted a very active young juvenile. We first noticed this young humpback doing a spinning head breach off our bow. The closer we came, we noticed the back and underside of this animal was very lumpy. We were then able to identify this young humpback whale as Perseids 2010 calf. This young humpback was very active. We watched her tail breach two or three times and she was lobtailing right next to the boat. We stayed with her for the remainder of our trip as she rolled over and lifted her tail out of the water in a behavior called lobtailing and inverted lobtailing. What a show!
We also had great looks at seabirds including close looks at Cory's shearwaters. We also had great looks at greater shearwaters, sooty shearwaters and manx shearwaters. A great day offshore with lots of great sightings a many different types of marine wildlife.
2 pm trip:
Heading out to Stellwagen Bank for the second time today, we noticed that the wind started to pick up out of the northwest. We all know that this means a better chance to see breaching whales (whales jumping out of the water). Breaching and other active behaviors are not seen as often as we like, typically on less than ten percent the trips.
We crossed over the southern part of Stellwagen Bank and headed further to the east. This is an area the whales have spent a lot of time over the last few days. As we moved into this area, we observed quite a few single humpback whales scattered throughout the area. Unfortunately none of them seemed to spend much time on the surface.
We did get a great look at a humpback whale named Basin that was logging in the area. Logging is a behavior displayed by humpbacks as they rest near or at the surface. Unlike us, they are voluntary breathers and have to actively think to take each and every breath. So they can not afford to sleep as soundly as we do and as other mammals do. But they do need to rest or catnap and this is exactly what Basin was doing just off our starboard side.
The captain decided to travel further east on the bank in search for some whales that were more active on the surface. This turned out to be a great call by our captain, after only a few minutes of traveling we had breaching whales between a half mile to a mile away from us. The captain now had to make another decision, this time of which whale to approach and get a better look at.
Once again our captain made an excellent choice and headed over to a whale that was breaching off our bow. This humpback was very active and ended up breaching continuously for over 20 minutes with just some short recovery breaks. We all lost track of how many breaches this humpback performed, but we estimated at least 30 breaches that altered between chin breaches, spinning head breaches and pull breaches.
Whales can breach or jump out of the water in a number of different ways. Chin breaching is when a whale jumps out of the water head first and then slams their chin back on the water's surface.
When a whale does a spinning head breach, they jump out of the water head first, but they begin the jump in a belly-up orientation. When in mid air, they spin their whole body around and crash back onto the water on their belly or side.
The third and last kind of breach that we got to see was a pull breach. Here the whales jumps out of the water head first and the orientation of the body is belly up. As the whale sails through the air, they do not spin their body. Instead, they fall back into the water on their backs.
When all was said and done, we realized that the only kind of breach that this animal did not show us today was a tail breach. When a whale does a tail breach, they throw their bodies out of the water tail first and land on their sides.
During this sighting, the whale swam straight under the front, or bow of the boat. As we watched in amazement, we saw 3 giant bluefin tunas swimming just beneath her. These magnificent fishes were estimated to weigh somewhere between 250 - 300 pounds.
Unfortunately we do not have unlimited time out on the water and we had to head back to Plymouth for the day. As we started our journey back, we saw looked around us and saw other humpbacks breaching in the distance as if waving us goodbye.
We also saw a large number of seabirds including: Cory's shearwaters, greater shearwater, sooty shearwaters, manx shearwaters and Wilson's storm petrels.
