East Coast Trip Page 5
Wednesday June 6, 2007 The Whale Watch: So
this was all I was waiting for the whole trip: the single most exciting thing
I was hoping to wow David with and rekindle my dreams of being a marine biologist:
the whale watch. We reserved on the Portuguese Princess which partners with
the Centers for Coastal Studies and I like doing the trips with them because
they work for conservation, education and all those great things I want to give
my money to. We woke up early after getting to bed late (midnight) and drove
the hour into Ptown, coffee in hand and some snackage packed in the back pack,
as well and the binoculars. The sun was shining like we hoped and I was all
anticipation. My heart sank when 120 million adolescent schoolchildren boarded
the boat along with us, and I whined and complained but it was surprisingly
okay once we found our little spot on deck away from the obnoxiousness. I'll
start with a shot of the harbor from the boat- but the whales came early and
amazingly!
I spotted a spray as soon as we got into the harbor and we headed straight for it. This is where we met Apostrophe, a female humpback who feeds by tail slapping and blowing bubbles and holy cow did she give us a show! She was along with two other humpbacks who have been seen feeding in the harbor together for the past week- an female and an unknown whale who were not nearly so exciting, as they fed by making shallow dives. Apostrophe went about her business without regard to us- but we were SO close and she was amazing!
A minke whale, the smallest of the whales at 25 feet max. We saw two Minkes, although fairly quickly.
The fin whale, the longest whale besides the Blue whale at 60-85 feet. Fast
swimmers and not very exciting to watch, we saw three of them.
The breach photo is not mine, unfortunately. The humpback whale is the second (or third, depending on what you read) largest whale under the fin at 40-50 feet in length.
The following pictures are actually mine: most of them are of Apostrophe, first slapping her tail and blowing bubbles to stun and corral her feeder fish balls into gulp-able bunches, as well as Percussion and a second whale who was unknown that has been seen with Percussion over the past few weeks. The trip rounded out by us running into a lone juvenile humpback whale who came up to our boat in what they call a "curious whale encounter" where he was just popping his head out of the water to check us out, going from side to side and around and under the boat, just checking us out. He actually breached full out of the water once, but of course I missed it!
Apostrophe feeding: she was really THAT close! It was incredible. Absolutely incredible! Below are some other shots of the trip:
checking us out!
That
was so cool. Next to these pictures, the fin whales we saw were positively boring,
all you really saw where a couple of grey long backs on the surface so I didn't
really include any of those shots. I am still impressed I got these. It was
*so* exciting! The rest of the afternoon we spent going in and out of art galleries
on the cape. But this was definitely my highlight.