Whale-watching

I went whale-watching yesterday. Ok, I admit that actually this is not my photo and it was taken sometime last week and not yesterday. But my classmate got a nicer photo than I did of the whale tail and I don't see why I can't use it. Click here to see my photos. (I also have videos and if someone can tell me how to post these I'd be happy to oblige).

We had a choppy start to our whale-watching exploit. The swells were 3-4 feet high but I didn't know what that meant until we hit them. It is just like air turbulence. Fortunately, I have a pretty strong stomach so didn't feel queasy at all. We had been misled by our very smooth journey to Provincetown when half of us fell asleep on the way back.

Fortunately, the vessel stopped at our first whale quickly! We rushed out to the viewing decks to see this huge mammal blowing water through its blowhole, arching its back to the water and then taking its dive (the tail is the last thing which appears). A full grown whale is about 75 feet or so (I think) but we don't see the whole thing all at once. We also didn't really see the head that clearly. According to the commentator, the whales occasionally "breach" i.e. jump completely out of the water, but that didn't happen yesterday. What an amazing sight that must be.

When the whale resurfaces for air, it can come up somewhere different.... like the other side of the boat. That is when we scurry to the other side of the boat to see the action. After a few minutes of this, the whale disappeared and we went on to the next whale. Generally, we were going to the feeding areas for whales - where there is an intense supply of plankton for the whales. It is surely part of divine providence that the largest of mammals feeds on the smallest organisms. Much better than T-rexes eating mammals.

Altogether we saw two different species of whale (fin-backed whale and hump-backed whale). There was one exciting moment when I saw two whales swimming together, albeit some distance away. Other whale behaviours observed: bubble nets whereby the whale circles just below the water blowing water/air through its system. Also, our last whale was pretty exciting, doing "side lunges" and lifting its flipper out of the water as it circled and turned.

Highly recommended for any visitor to Boston - only the season is ending soon.