July 4, 2012 Whale Watches

9 am and 2 pm Whale Watches - Krill 

9 am trip: written by NECWA intern Kate Davis

Happy independence Day!

This morning’s trip left Plymouth Harbor in the rain.  Luckily, as time passed offshore, the weather cleared significantly, and it ended up being beautiful weather for a whale watch.

A few miles off Gurnet point, one of our passengers spotted a minke whale off the side of the boat but we didn’t linger on it as we still had a ways to go before we got to the spot we hoped we would see a larger number of animals.

As we crossed over the east side of Stellwagen Bank in the waters of the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, we saw an unknown humpback whale off the bow.  We tried to follow its progress, but the whale was taking very long deep dives making it difficult to get near the animal.  So we decided to move on to another humpback whale that was moving into the area from the north. 

This humpback whale was a whale named Dyad.  Dyad is a female whale who seemed to be traveling through the area. As Dyad prepared for a deep dive, she lifted her tail out of the water giving us a look at the black & white pattern on the underside (ventral).  We stayed with Dyad for quite awhile as her dives were shorter and she was spending more time on the surface.

We left Dyad to head North up the bank to see if we could spot pick up another sighting, but came up short, despite the valiant efforts of our captain. But we did get some great looks at Cory's shearwaters, a shearwater that is not that common to our waters. 

2 pm trip: written by NECWA intern Lisa Burke

Happy Independence Day everyone! 

I can't think of a better what to spend the 4th of July afternoon then to head out to Stellwagen Bank and see some whales. Unlike the morning whale watch that had to deal with some rain, we had perfect weather conditions for the entire trip. 

Our first sighting was of a minke whale. Knowing that there was a humpback a little further up, we decided to move on after only a few minutes. 

As we approached the humpback whale, we did manage to get a quick glimpse of the fluke and later identified this whale as Crystal. Crystal is the first calf of Salt, the most famous humpback whale. Crystal is a male who was born in 1980 so Crystal is now 32 years old. How cool is that!

In the distance we could see a blue object in the water. We decided to take a closer look and discovered that it was a balloon. With some great manuvering skills from Capt Jonny Dennen and a little help from our deckhands, we were able to retrieve the balloon and put it in the trash where it belongs (thanks Brenden and Andrew!!). 

Balloons are very dangerous to marine wildlife because as their pigmentation fades, they begin to resemble jellyfish. Animals such as sea turtles get confused and attempt to eat them. Because of this, we cannot urge you enough to NOT release balloons for any reason, even if you are not close to the ocean since they can travel thousands of miles. 

Humpback whales Timberline and Apostrophe. 

Humpback whale Timberline. 

After quickly passing a seal, we then came to our last sighting: two humpback whales that were traveling side-by-side. We got some great looks at these mammals as they came close to the boat. We were able to ID one of the whales to be Apostrophe and Timberline. How appropriate is it that one of Apostrophe's calves' name is Liberty? 

Humpback whale Apostrophe.

It was definitely a good way to end the whale watch. We had great looks at seabirds on today's trip including great shearwaters, Cory's shearwaters and Wilson's storm petrels. We hope everyone had a happy and safe 4th of July!