With light winds and calm seas, we headed out across Cape Cod Bay, bound to the location we had whales the day prior.  One of the ways we find whales is to go to the area they were last seen, often working together with other boats, all while following the whale watching guidelines and federal speed restriction in place through May 15 to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

Just south of the spot where we had whales the day prior, we could see white water and spouts (the misty foggy area created when a whale exhales).  We came upon a group of 7 humpback whales associated with each other traveling with a pod of Atlantic White Sided Dolphins.  Several whales from the day prior were still together in this group, which included: Falcon, Perseid, Jabiru, Jupiter, Hazard, Aerospace, and Eruption. 

The group was circling in the same area, coming up all around the boat as we sat drifting.  Crossing off our stern and under our bow, we could see the entire bodies below the surface of the calm water.  The pod of dolphins would often ‘indicate’ when the whales were surfacing, as their behavior increased at the surface just as the larger whales came back up.  Bright green patches would glow as the humpbacks long white flippers reflected through the algae and plankton in the water.  A third of the body length, flippers are made of the same bones as our hand and arms, just in different proportions.

While we waited for this group to surface, we got a quick glimpse of another humpback passing through the area. Etch-a-sketch, the granddaughter of Salt, and easy to identify from her distinct dorsal and the divot left by a tag as part of a study conducted in the area by researchers the two years prior.  Etch-a-sketch has been seen by researchers in the West Indies during the winter months/calving season, as has her famous grandmother Salt.  She continued north without even raising her flukes out of the water.

As we drifted with 7 humpbacks and 40-50 dolphins circling around the boat, we could see another pair of humpbacks coming in to the area and even more spouts spread about the southern edge of the bank.  As we watched the whales, you could see it is the start of the feeding season, as many look thin after a winter on the breeding and calving ground eating little to no food and relying solely on their fat reserves. Now is the time to build the reserves back up and this seemed to be what our group was doing, feeding deeper and in the exact same spot.  We even got a few loud trumpet exhales, showing some excitement or perhaps agitation.

Whale of the Day Profiles:  Perseid, a mature female, was born in 1998 to Palette (born in 1989). She is the granddaughter of Compass (first cataloged in 1984).  Perseid has all black flukes with just a dash of white on the left leading edge. Her fluke darkened dramatically after her calf year, causing her to be renamed after she was resighted in 1999.  Fortunately, the error was caught and she reverted back to her original name.  When Perseid had her first calf, it became the first fourth generation whale in the Gulf of Maine Humpback Whale Catalog.

It was another amazing day of whale watching with the Hyannis Whale Watcher Cruises!

-Joanne M Jarzobski

Though cold, windy weather has cancelled some recent trips, Cape Cod whale watching has been red hot! We are currently offering whale watch adventures Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Check out our full schedule at: http://whales.net/calendar/full_calendar.html. Here's what was going on out there on Saturday, April 20. Though we can only watch them in the distance, right whale sightings have been incredible. They may only be around for a bit more, before making their exodus. So here's what Joanne noted:

The rain stopped just in time for us to board our passengers for our 11 AM whale watch. We had only traveled a couple of miles into Cape Cod Bay when we had our first sighting of North Atlantic right whales, the most endangered large whale in the world.  We could see the whale’s high black fluke being raised out of the water as the whale dove.  We recorded the position and time to report in to the Sightings Advisory System which would send an alert to mariners.

A North Atlantic right whale fluking up near Sandy Neck

We continued through Cape Cod Bay and spotted several more right whales to our west.  As we headed north, following the 10 knot speed restriction which is in place to protect right whales from vessel strikes, we noticed from a distance a right whale behaving slightly differently.  Even from 2 miles away, we could see it was high skim feeding, holding its head out of the water as it skimmed the surface feeding on planktonic animals called copepods.  The whale was zigzagging through a patch of plankton, which was evident by a slick in the water.  We noticed this particular whale had a scar near the tip of its rostrum, we used binoculars to confirm it was a scar and not an entangling line, as right whales second biggest threat is entanglements in fishing gear.  Once confirmed, we continued north.

High skimming right whale. Note white scar from previous entanglement with fishing gear.

Just past Race Point Lighthouse, we could see blows of a different form, those made by humpbacks.  We had our first humpback sightings of the season. There were about a dozen spread out of a two mile radius.  We stopped on a single and a pair.  The pair included a mature male named Tunguska. Tunguska was born in 1997 to Leukos and has been seen every year since his birth.  Tunguska has a nearly all white fluke with black lines along the leading edges and a large, pointed dorsal fin.  He was named for the comet that exploded in the atmosphere above Siberia in 1908 above Tunguska.  Although it did not make contact with the earth, it estimated 60 million trees were knocked down by the blast.

Humpback whale: Tunguska Our first humpback of the season!

Traveling in association with Tunguska was a whale named Eruption.  Both whales were traveling just below the surface, never raising their flukes. They moved very slow, taking periodic breaths.  Occasionally, we could see their long white flippers glowing green through the plankton and algae rich waters.  Humpback whales have just started returning to the high latitude, cold water feeding grounds after spending several months in the low latitude, warm water breeding and calving grounds.

The dorsal fin shaped dorsal fin of humpback whale: Eruption. A regular off Cape Cod.

We returned to Cape Cod Bay, passing through the ‘rip’ at Race Point and saw a grey seal and found a few harbor porpoises milling about.  The smallest of the toothed whales in our area, they travel in small pods or family units.  Back in the bay, we saw a minke whale in the distance and as we came back south, we noticed more and more right whales high skim feeding. Something had changed and we could see heads and whales echelon (in line) feeding for quite a distant. We saw a line of 5, including two pairs, and then another group of 3-5. Just two miles outside of Barnstable Harbor, we still saw right whales high skim feeding in the distance.- Joanne Jarzobski

Two right whales echelon feeding in the distance.

Saturday's birds were awesome, as we had gone out a bit further toward the sanctuary, and included: common & red-throated loons, common eider, all three scoters,  razorbill, common, and thick-billed murre, northern gannet, common goldeneye, oldsquaw,  double-crested cormorants northern gannets, red-necked phalaropes (interestingly, foraging at the edge of the right whales' "funny water"!)  Bonaparte's, ring-billed, laughing, herring, and greater black-backed gulls, and parasitic jaeger