Dear Mom...
You remember, I started this blog last year to have a place to put my thoughts and experiences from my whale-watching class in Massachusetts. Last year I barely posted anything, because it was such a jam-packed week. They have to make sure we *earn* the 3 college credits we're getting for the class, after all. :)
It was such an incredible experience last year that I chose to take it again this year. It's been interesting, comparing the differences between the 2 trips.
Probably the biggest difference is in my emotional state. Last year, it was just over 6 months since we'd lost you, and it was the first real trip I'd taken since you'd been gone. That was hard for me, because I was so used to calling you when anything neat happened on a trip, and sharing it with you. We had some neat stuff happen, and I couldn't call you, and hadn't gotten into the habit of writing you, yet. That was hard.
And then one night, I found myself standing at a jewelry
counter at a restaurant gift shop, looking at dangly earrings, so I could
choose the perfect pair for your gift. I
still remember how empty I felt inside when I realized again that I wouldn’t
ever be buying you another pair of earrings. I almost put them back, but decided I’d buy them for myself, and wear
them in your honor.
It’s funny. When I would wear those, I would almost feel
like you were there, knowing what was going on, and still being a part of my
life.
I left them at home this trip, to symbolize to myself that
I’m moving on, and it’s enough that I’m carrying you with me in my heart,
without needing the external reminders.
Another huge difference, and one that most others would see
first, since it’s external, is the whales. Last year was a very poor season for whale-watchers. We went on 7-8 whale-watching cruises, each
cruise lasting around 4 hours or so, and I think we might have seen one whale
on each cruise, other than watching Minke whales on the horizon, if you could
see them.
This year, we’ve been on 2 cruises so far, and on each cruise, I’ve heard the naturalist say “Oh my goodness – I’ve never seen anything like this before.” That’s even more cool when you realize that Cynde’s been on probably more than 2000 whale-watching cruises, and not just here at Cape Ann.
Yesterday (July 10) was our first cruise of the year. We
went out in the afternoon, so we left the dock around 1230. They had seen whales on the morning cruise,
so we headed out where those had been seen, and found 2 humpbacks. They hung around for awhile, and we got good
looks at them, and when they’d dive, I got some really good pictures of their
flukes. That’s their tails, Mom. They
kind of push themselves deeper into the water with it, the way a swimmer would
use her flippers to help her dive deepr, and as they’re completing the dive,
the flukes will rise up out of the water, and the water will be streaming off
them like a miniature waterfall. Last
year, we saw 2 humpbacks total for the year, and the only picture I got of
flukes was a profile shot. It was a cool picture , but not
what most people are thinking of when they think of whale tails.
This year, we saw two humpbacks on our very first day! And where last year’s whales would come to
the surface for about 4 breaths and dive again (staying under for up to 20
minutes), these ones stayed near the surface. Even when they dove deeper and
showed us their flukes, they came back up-top fairly quickly, and stayed around
to give us another show.
After awhile, we left the humpbacks, and some of us thought we were headed back into shore. But Jeff, our captain, had another idea. He likes to just go out “exploring,” where he thinks a whale might be. Yesterday, as he was heading out to an area that was promising, he was looking at a bunch of sailboats strung out in a line (there was a sailboat race taking place yesterday). As he and Cynde were watching the sailboats, they saw a whole bunch of whale spoutings in the same general area.
You know what I mean, right? You know, how whales blow this big spout of water up into the air? (they’re actually exhaling, like when we see our breath in the winter). Apparently, there were 5-6 whales out there in front of the sailboats. So we headed up that way, and as we were just looking around on the way, we saw little teeny-tiny fish swimming around near the top of the water. You couldn’t really see them – they were just red lines in the water. Turns out, these are “krill,” which is a tasty diet for a whale. Of course, a whale has to eat a lot of them, since krill are generally less than 3” long, and a humpback whale eats 3-4K pounds of food a day.
As we got closer to the whales, we saw that they were
finback whales, the fastest whale there is (they’re called the greyhound of the
sea). And they were feeding, eating the
krill that we had seen.
Now you have to understand, Mom… baleen whales (like the finbacks) are
typically solitary eaters, because they have such healthy appetites. But we
were in the midst of a group of 6-8 finback whales who were all sharing the
same feeding ground, swimming in circles around it, and then rolling onto their
sides and swimming right through the cloud of krill with their mouths wide open
to suck it all in. Cynde described it as
a feeding frenzy. She said the whales were so focused on the krill that she was
afraid they were going to run into the boat a couple times. I’m so glad they didn’t.
It was cool, Mom – you’d have gotten a kick out of Cynde. At
one point, she just said “I can’t even tell you where to look. They’re all
around the book. No matter where you look, you’ll see a whale.” She had NEVER seen anything like this before.
I took more pictures yesterday than I took for the entire
trip, last year. And that was just our
first trip.
We went back out this morning, and we pretty quickly found another couple of humpbacks – different ones from yesterday (they can tell because the flukes have distinctive markings. Yesterday, we saw “little spot” and “flask.” Today, we saw Reaper and Nile). After watching them for awhile, we headed out to where we had seen the finbacks feeding yesterday, but we never got there. Captain Jeff pulled another miracle out of his hat, and heading towards some spouts on the horizon, he landed us in the midst of some Sei whales who were taking advantage of a tidal rip to get some good feeding from the tiny sea creatures (copepods) that were all kind of trapped there. And it was just like yesterday, only with a different whale species. The Sei whales were circling our boat, gliding sideways through the wather with their mouths open, feeding, and generally having a wonderful time. We kind of felt like we were in the middle of their kitchen table. Then we noticed there were some finbacks eating there, too. Finners eat a different type of tiny sea creature than the Sei whales do, so they could both eat in the same area without competing with each other.
It was so cool, Mom. On
the way back to shore, Cynde told us
that between them, she and Jeff probably have over 5000 whale-watching cruises,
and neither of them had EVER seen anything like this before. She’s only ever seen Sei whales traveling,
not feeding, and certainly not in groups like this. We even saw the first batch
of Sei whales we’d seen coming over to the second group, to join in the
party.
I didn’t take as many pictures today – it seems like I was always
on the opposite side of the boat from where the whales were being their most
photogenic, but that’s ok. It was enough to just enjoy the experience, and
marvel at what we were seeing. One time,
a finback whale surfaced pretty close to the boat, and when it exhaled, all the
condensation kind of hung in the air beside it, before the wind blew it towards
us on the boat. We call that “whale breath,” it can be pretty rank, if you ever
smell it. So we tend to turn away as it’s
moving towards us.
This time, I was watching it for awhile before I turned, and I saw the morning sun hit the condensation.
Oh, wow…
Mom, it made the most beautiful prisms…better rainbows than I’ve ever gotten from a garden hose. It’s a pretty cool thing when you can see rainbows in something that is essentially whale snot, I think.
I gotta run… it’s well past bedtime, and we have class again
in the morning. We’re going back out on the whale boat in the afternoon, and
after 2 such wonderful trips, we have high hopes for tomorrow’s trip. I’ll let you know how it goes.
I love you, Mom.
Comments