The Whales are on a Roll

Posted on August 12, 2016August 12, 2016 by Dusty Roads

I’ve been doing a lot more whale watching this season because the whales seem to be especially active this year. They have been so active that I have skipped some of my other seaside activities to get some extra outings and I have not been disappointed.

A couple of weeks after the Great Puffin Adventure I decided to give the morning whale watch a try. I stayed on the upper deck this time. I wanted to try a different angle.

Sure enough, it was a very active trip. Right off the bat we spotted multiple humpbacks. At first we were getting backs showing as they cruised along and a few flukes.

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I have plenty of photos of backs and flukes so I wasn’t too interested in that.

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A bit deeper into Stellwagon bank we found ourselves surrounded by groups of humpbacks surface feeding.

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That’s always fun to watch. There lots of activity with the birds trying to steal the fish that manage to escape the huge mouths.

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Plus the whales swim along the surface with the water streaming out the sides of their mouths as they strain the water through their baleen.

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That alone would have been a successful trip but suddenly there was a mother and calf off the port side. “Mom” would flipper slap and then the little one one would do the same.

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This went on for quite awhile. In fact all of us with cameras had plenty of time to get pictures.

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Eventually, as if to say goodbye, mom rolled onto her back and gave a double wave, both flippers waving in the air and then both mom and calf disappeared beneath the surface. The show was over.

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We watched some more surface feeding before it was time to head back. I was just packing up the camera when a collective WOW! went up. I looked up in time to see a whale fully breaching. It was quite a distance away. It flew fully out of the water like a giant dolphin! The splash down was huge.

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That was the only full breach I saw but the feisty whale gave us a few other partial breaches. I managed to get the camera back out for the end of the show.

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I’m not too disappointed that I missed getting a shot of the full breach. It was amazing to see and I think I appreciated it more by being able to watch it without the little view finder. A breaching whale, at least in this area, is a rare sight.

I’ll keep looking for another opportunity for that awesome photo shot but if I never get it , I won’t be too sad. I’ll chalk it up to the one that got away.

A Whale’s Tail

Posted on August 3, 2015August 3, 2015 by Dusty Roads

As fast as the Real Estate rush began it stopped. I went from working every waking moment to suddenly having time on my hands. I keep thinking there’s something I’ve forgotten to do. There was no gradual slowing down…just slammed one minute and then nothing the next! So with a quiet Sunday staring me in the face I thought a whale watching trip might be in order.

I ordered my ticket online and headed to Plymouth at 11:30. I figured I’d get there early, have some lunch and then line up for boarding. It was a beautiful day, close to 90 degrees and sunny.

A perfect day to be on the water.

The activity at Plymouth Harbor proved my assumption. Traffic was brutal and parking nonexistent. I was very glad I gave myself extra time. I finally parked in the Citizens Bank lot which had been opened up for a fee of $10.00 for the day.

But once underway the hassle was all worthwhile.

We passed Bug light and then Gurnet Point Lighthouse which marks the end of the harbor. We headed out to Stellwagon Bank which is an underwater plateau. These plateaus cause “upwelling” which stirs up the nutrients and makes for rich feeding grounds. It’s also a protected marine sanctuary. One corner of the plateau comes quite close to Provincetown on the tip of Cape Cod. It was my guess that this was where we were headed.

The Pilgrim Tower in Provincetown hadn’t quite come into view when I saw something breach and splash. Then others saw it when it happened again. It was so quick none of us knew what we were seeing. Finally the naturalist on board got on the PA and told us we’d just witnessed some tuna jumping! Tuna, I never would have guessed!

A few minutes later we entered the Marine sanctuary and immediate spotted 4 humpback whales . They were an Association not a Pod as Pods are families and these were 4 unrelated whales.

It was the day of the tails.

They’d cruise along on the surface for a bit then dive and all of them liked getting their tail flukes out of the water.

2 of the Whales came right up next to our boat. Of course, I was on the wrong side. Just my luck!

No breaching or flipper slapping today but we got great looks at the tails. The tails besides being so very photogenic are also like fingerprints. Each whale has a different pattern and the scientists have thousands of tail flukes cataloged. I’m sure the photographer on board is sending all of her photos out for identification.

We saw some other whales besides these 4 but they were more distant and these four were happy to stay and play with us so why search for more?

I had a whale of a time!

Photo of the week ~ 25

Posted on June 25, 2014June 25, 2014 by Dusty Roads

This week’s Photo of the week had a real nautical theme. That crazy Humpback , Hancock had 3 photos in the running and his antics carried the day. Weighing in with a total of 25 points Tail Waving is the photo of the day.

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To order prints click here: http://dustyroadsphotos.zenfolio.com/p161572686/h3a02eec4#h3a02eec4

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See you there!

Meet Niles

Posted on August 10, 2013August 10, 2013 by Dusty Roads

It was a nice day for a boat ride but everyone wanted to see whales so there was a lot of clock watching going on. Mumbles about how we’d been sailing for an hour and seen nothing and were we going to slow down to look etc.

I was just enjoying the sun and ride. It didn’t seem that long to me. One lady was here from Louisiana and she was bundled up to her eye brows. She thought it was really cold. She was following the temperatures in Louisiana on her phone. She showed me it was 93 there to our 80. She also talked about how crowded Boston was and expensive…$60 for 3 people to have dinner and the MBTA was twice what they pay for the subway. (I didn’t know they had a subway in Louisiana) I’m not sure what town she was from but she did say it was the northern part of the state and her husband and oldest son were both “in oil”. Oh yes she thought gas process here were insane. I have to agree with her on that point.

By now we were nearing the tip of Cape Cod. We could see the Pilgrim Tower in Provincetown off in the distance. This was just about where we were with Capt’n John.

And just as with Capt’n John we spotted some Minke whales first. Then the naturalist said she could see another whale near one of the other boats. She thought it was a finback. Just then right in front of us (12 o’clock as they say) we had a whale surface and blow!

The captain swung the boat left as she broke the surface again and this time I got a quick look. Humpback! Now it was time to wiggle my way to the rail trying not to throw any little ones overboard.

Humpbacks are identified by markings on their tail flukes and this whale was “fluking” regularly. I couldn’t see the side with the markings but the Naturalist on the bridge could and said it was a female named Niles. She has a squiggly white line on her flukes that someone thought looked like the Nile River so she was named Niles.

We hung out with Niles for the rest of the tour watching her dive and feed. At one point she went under the stern and popped up again right next to us pushing her big head out so we got a glimpse of her nose. The Naturalist said she was filter feeding and that action helps drain the water out of her mouth leaving the food behind.

More and more boats began to arrive so reluctantly we had to leave Niles behind. She was the only Humpback we saw and because we had to go so far to find her we didn’t look for any others. It was time to turn around and head back to Boston.

Going back we were heading into the wind so I was glad I brought a hoodie with me. Most of the folks who had been sitting and standing here in the bow with me retired to the enclosed seats now that they’d seen their whale.

As we entered the inner harbor a plane flew low over the boat and came in for a landing at Logan Airport. The runway they came in on ran parallel to us so for a few minutes we paced the huge plane until it turned away to it’s gate.

It’s hard to believe it’s 5:30. The time went really fast. With the Aquarium closed I’m going to head over the Faneuil Hall to kill some time and let the subway clear out a bit before I head home.