The Virginia Blogs: Minkes are Very Shy

Or, Non-Whale Watch

Another weekend adventure, this one gone slightly wrong.

We’re always on the lookout for something interesting to do, and this looked like a wonderful idea for a sunny Saturday afternoon. Having been on whale watches before, I was really looking forward to this.

Let me tell you a little bit about my other whale watches before I get into this so you understand where I was coming from on this. In college, my friend R and I went on quite a few. They were all based out of a wonderful little town north of Boston called Gloucester. This was a very quaint untouched New England town that had the statue of the original Gorton’s Fisherman. There is a plaque in the middle of the town next to a ship’s bell. This plaque has a psalm on it that is entitled, They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships. In fact, it is now a semi-famous town where the men were based out of in the movie “The Perfect Storm”.

There is a whale-watching ship that leaves from there and works with an oceanographic society that monitors the oceans for the health of whales and other fish. This ship travels out nearly an hour to the Stellwagen Bank, a rise in the ocean floor where Atlantic whales summer. It’s a fish- and nutrient-rich area that they just seem to love.

Some of the species that live there are fin, right, minke, and humpbacks. There are Atlantic white-sided and bottle nose dolphins that play with the boats. And you have to go far enough out that you can’t see the land.

On our first trip we saw probably 4 humpbacks, several dozen fin whales and a few minkes, but Minkes are very shy*. The dolphins played with the boat the whole time and several people chummed over the side. It was rough, but a blast.

Every other time we have gone up there to the Stellwagen bank, we have seen whales. On one trip we were even treated to a breach. Breaching is something that seems to be specific to humpbacks; it’s when they launch themselves out of the water and slap back down into it. It’s an amazing display. Just amazing. And it’s a wonderful day on the water.

So, when I saw this whale-watching trip, I got excited. Tom had never been for all the times I had gone, and I wanted to share what’s an amazing experience with him.

Yeah.

We went down to Rudee Inlet and found the dock where the boat was. It was run by the Virginia Aquarium, and it was quite pricey to go on this. We were warned there was no guarantee of whales on this trip**. We boarded the boat, and found that there were already no seats. We were standing for the duration.



We pulled out and headed out to sea. We went straight out for about 40 minutes, and I was on the lookout for two things: birds, specifically seagulls, in large flocks and the tell-tale blow of a whale. When a whale surfaces, it exhales before it inhales because it needs to clean out the water. Whales, being mammals, cannot take in seawater just as we cannot. So they blow it out.

I looked and I looked and I looked and I looked and—I thought I saw something! I pointed excitedly, and the guide had seen the same thing. It was a stinking bird. A diving bird. Then I thought I saw something else, and that was a bird, too. A Cormorant. They skim along the surface and look very much like a surfacing whale.

Grr.

We continue on. And on, and on and start circling back around to head back into land. The Aquarium representative then tells those in listening distance that’s been a bad year for whales. He hasn’t seen one in three weeks and that it had been a bad year for whales. They could barely keep up with them last year, but they had only seen three or four of them all season.

Grr.


A Consolation prize of a pelican.

The boat load of people is now done with this whale watch because we can all tell this isn’t going to happen. The boat starts to head back to the inlet and it’s quiet and calm. Half way there, someone spots a dolphin. Then another, then two more. There was small pod, but they were clearly heading somewhere because they had no interest in playing with the boat or checking it out. All I got was a blurry picture of water as they swam by.



We got back into port, and disembarked from the ship. I turned to Tom and said, “Next year, we take a long weekend and we go up to Gloucester in the fall and you’ll get to see some whales.”

Dinner, at least, was good.

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*This is a long standing joke with R and I. They only said it about 100 times on that first trip.
**That should have tipped me off. Every other whale watch was “Whales or Your Money Back”