Watchin' Whales

After some intense days of packing, I took a well needed break to go on a whale watching cruise. I've never seen whales in the ocean before, so I was really hoping it was my lucky day. I went on the Boston Harbor Cruises high speed catamaran because it is "Boston's only 3 hour whale watch" and that was about how many hours I could spare from packing duty. The weather that day was absolutely perfect.

The whale watch trip goes out to Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. It takes about an hour to get there from Boston. The view in this picture was taken a short bit away from the harbor.

I can see why the whale watch companies can guarantee that you see whales. Stellwagen is full of them. Apparently, the sanctuary is a rich feeding ground for whales. It was hard to take pictures because it was really bright out and I can't really see my camera screen in the bright sun. Also, those whales are tricky. It is hard to tell where they are going to surface. The best clue is their spouts:

They also make these bubble areas to help them catch more fish. The bubbles make the water a different color, so you can sometimes guess where they are going to surface if you see a discolored area in the water. There are a bunch of birds out there mooching off of the whales' hunting efforts.

I believe this photo is of a humpback whale. If I remember right, they told us that humpbacks are the only whales that bring their flukes out of the water like this.

There was a naturalist and an intern on board from the Whale Watch Center. The naturalist was a crazy multi-tasker. She was simultaneously spotting the whales, taking photos of them, telling the intern information to write down on her clipboard (they conduct research on each trip out), telling the ship's captain over a walky talky which way to turn the ship and narrating for us over a microphone telling us where to look and explaining what we were seeing. She had mad skills.

At one point, we were watching a small group of whales a good distance from the boat. The multi-tasking woman was telling us that we were looking at a mother and calf that they have been tracking. They are from the Dominican Republic and came up north for some good eatin' at Stellwagen. The whales went back under for a good amount of time and suddenly resurfaced really, really close to the boat. Here is a lame, quickly snapped photo of them:

In this photo you can see a whale's open mouth sticking out of the water. I'm not sure why it was doing that but the birds seemed to take advantage of it and many of them landed on the whale's mouth.

I wish the photos better demonstrated the magnificence of the experience. It was truly beautiful and awe inspiring to be so close to such huge creatures on their turf. The multi-tasking lady told us that they aren't disturbed by the presence of the boat so I didn't have to feel guilty while gawking at them.