Whale Watching in Massachusetts

After our successful blue shark dive in Rhode Island, Veronica and I decided to travel another one and a half hours north to Plymouth, Massachusetts. We haven’t been to Plymouth in years and we were eager to return. Our good friends, Mark, Jill and Seamus Stanton live fifteen minutes from Plymouth and we would be able to spend time with them. Mark is the owner and producer of Divers Down TV. Our other reason for visiting Plymouth was to go whale watching. On our last visit, we had three great days of whale watching and we hoped that it would repeat on this trip. We arrived late morning and tried for an early check in at the Radisson Hotel Plymouth Harbor. We were informed that it was too early and that our room wasn’t ready. They did let us leave our cooler with Veronica’s meds in a storage room. We were thankful for that. The hotel turned out to be a great place to stay and we would highly recommend it to anyone visiting Plymouth.

We parked our car in the hotel’s parking lot and walked a couple of blocks to the harbor. Our whale watching company of choice is Capt. John Boats. They are located in the heart of Plymouth Harbor. We signed up for the 2:00 pm boat. During this time of the year, there were three trips running a day. One at 9:00 am, one at 11:00 am and again at 2:00 pm. Each trip lasts about four hours. There are also whale watch trips that go out of Boston and Provincetown. They all go to the same area to find whales. That area is the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. The difference between Boston, Plymouth and Provincetown is the travel time from the city of departure to the Stellwagen Banks. The shortest trip is from Provincetown but getting out to the tip of the cape in the summer can be a very long and tedious trip. The boat ride from Provincetown is one and a quarter to one and a half hours. About an hour is spent with the whales and then the boat ride back to the dock.

My dive buddy, Beth Dalzell, and fourteen other members of her family were renting a house in Rhode Island for the week and all fifteen of them came up for the afternoon whale watch trip. Veronica and I were telling them how much we enjoyed our last whale watching trip and they wanted to see whales. Veronica and I hoped that after our recommendation, that we would see whales. They are wild animals and there are no guarantees that they will be there although Capt. John Boats does advertise “Sightings Guaranteed” on their web site. The boat had a pretty large crowd aboard as we sailed out of Plymouth Harbor and past the Duxbury Pier Lighthouse.

This lighthouse is known locally as “Bug Light” which comes from the abundance of North American lobsters (bugs) that are found there. We cruised out of the harbor and into Massachusetts Bay and onto the Stellwagen Banks. It didn’t take long to find humpback whales. During our trip, there were some sightings of minke whales but they don’t stay on the surface long. A naturalist aboard the boat said that by the time she tells people that there is a minke whale surfacing to breathe, it is already under the water.

Our afternoon trip was beautiful. The sun was shining and the surface of the water was calm. It made it much easier to find whales. We came on a group of three that really put on a show for us. The behavior that we saw the most was pectoral fin behavior also called ‘flippering’ or ‘pectoral slapping’. Their pectoral fins can be up to 20’ long.

It was amazing to watch a 40’ long humpback whale lying on its back on the surface waving its huge pectoral fins around. Then we saw a mother whale and her calf doing the same thing.

The next behavior that we saw was spy hopping. This is when a whale lifts its head out of the water and looks around. It is especially exciting when it does it right next to the boat.

Imagine the excitement for the people who had the best seats in the house for this show. The flippering or pectoral slapping went on for most of the time that we were with the whales. We were in awe of these giants floating around on the surface and waving their fins in the air. They put on an incredible show for us.

We also saw the whales diving and someone saw a whale breach behind the boat but no one in our group was lucky enough to see it. Before we knew it, it was time to head back to the dock. The trip was a huge success and Veronica and I breathed a sigh of relief. Beth and her whole family were as happy as could be.

It amazed us how close the whales would come to the boat. They are protected by federal law and the boat must stay where it is if a whale comes close. Boats must keep a certain distance from a whale but the whale can approach the boat if it wants to and they seem to like doing it. This one looks like its going to wipe the people off the deck with its pectoral fin. There were a few times during our trips where the captain held his position until he was sure where some diving whales were before moving.

 

The next morning, Veronica and I were up early and made our way to a Dunkin Donuts a few blocks away for a coffee fix and some breakfast. We walked to the harbor and arrived at the boat around 8:20 am for a 9:00 am departure. On Thursday mornings, children under 12 get to go free with an adult so we had lots of young ones on the boat. The morning started off kind of dreary and overcast. We didn’t know what we would find out on the banks. The first whales that we found were flippering and the dreary overcast conditions made the photos look like they were taken in black and white.

But soon after we arrived, we were treated to an amazing sight. Mom and her calf started to breach. Photographing a breaching whale is extremely difficult. I held my camera in the general direction where the whale began its dive and would trigger the autofocus every so often so I was close to the focus area when the breach happened. I had my motor drive on continuous high.

When the whale would breach, I would swing my camera at the whale and fire away. I ended up with some pretty great photos.

 

 

The calf did not do as good a job at breaching as mom did. She would come out of the water and try really hard to get a huge breach but couldn’t quite get it.

It was okay with all of us. The excitement on the boat was electric. Everyone was enjoying a show that the naturalist on the boat said only happens about once in every fifteen trips.

I was fortunate enough to see breaching on our trip years ago and caught some of it on film. It was so much more fun doing it in digital. I didn’t have to worry about running out of film or changing rolls. I had a 16GB card in my camera and it was good for as many shots as I was going to shoot that morning.

Humpback, right and sperm whales seem to breach more often than other species. There is belief that it has a role in communication. On the news.softpedia.com website, I read that breaching is the most powerful animal action and that it has a role of intimidating adversaries or impressing females. If that is so, why do females do it?

Humpback whales travel underwater close to the surface during a breach and then jerk upwards at full speed to perform the breech.

We also got to see another behavior that morning called ‘lobtailing’. The humpback whale would throw its tail high into the air. I am not exactly sure how they do it but it is really impressive. I have read that lobtailing is a means of foraging. The loud noise of the tail slapping on the water causes fish to become frightened and tightening their school, making it easier for the whale to feed on them.

I photographed at least six separate breaches and I was loving the heck out of this trip. Again, before we knew it, it was time to head back. Everyone aboard the morning trip got their money’s worth and had memories that will stay with them for a long time. Veronica and I have a tradition that we do on whale watch days. The morning boat docks around 1:00 pm and we have just enough time to go to Wood’s Seafood which is very close to the boat and get a cup or bowl of soup to go and then sit on the dock and eat it before getting onto the boat that leaves at 2:00 pm. We had the chance to try both Seafood Bisque and Fish Chowder. They were both excellent. I was looking for New England Clam Chowder but since we were in New England, the white soup was the fish chowder. Duh!

The afternoon boat trip was not as good as our two previous trips. We saw whales but they weren’t doing a lot. They spent a lot of time floating or “logging” on the surface. Humpback whales sleep just like us except when they sleep, they still have to breathe and that could be tough in the water. To do this, half of their brain sleeps while the other half attends to functions like breathing. This fact amazes the heck out of me. What amazes me even more is how someone determined that fact.

I think that most people are pretty impressed when they see a humpback whale lift its huge tail and begin a dive. I love photos like this. It just seems to imply strength and beauty. The last image that you see when a whale dives and you are behind it is the underside of its tail. A humpback whale’s tail can be up to 10’ wide and is made up of tendons and fibers and has no bones.

The markings found on the underside of the tail are unique to each whale and researchers use these markings to identify whales. Someone asked on the boat the first afternoon how long whales live. The naturalist was not sure so I looked it up on enchanted learning.com. They say that humpback whales live 45-50 years. A naturalist on our second trip said that they are developing a way to tell how old a whale is from a blubber sample.

It’s hard to believe that there is something like whale watching available to all of us who live or vacation in the northeastern United States. It’s only about a six hour drive from my home in New Jersey and Veronica and I were wondering why it has taken us so long to get back to Plymouth. We are hoping that it won’t take as long to get back again. We finished our trip off on Thursday night with a relaxing dinner at Isaac’s Restaurant with our friends, the Stanton’s. The food was great and the company was even better. We planned on whale watching on Friday but awoke to pea soup fog and extremely high humidity. We knew that even if they found whales in the fog, the photo prospects would not be good. Our next thought was to take a ferry to Provincetown but with the high humidity, it would just be a brutal day outdoors. We decided to cut our trip by a day and head home.

If you would like to see more of my humpback whale photos, visit my Photo Gallery or click here to go to the whale page.

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