THE PELAGIC PILGRIMAGE

Good Evening Baleen Battalion,

Today Captain Chip and his band of bluejackets welcomed us aboard the Aurora to observe cetacean behavior on the Southwest Corner of Stellwagen Bank. What we found was an aquatic rendition of the Iliad; a submarine struggle for survival that could have been summated by Homer himself! We skid across glass-calm waters and came upon an ocean surface stirred by an immense entity below. This was not the cause of a singular organism, but a microcosm of sand lance that were splashing out of the surface as far as one’s eyes could see!

Two finback whales crept from the slumber of the deep to break their fast on their minute fishy prey, and one of the deft leviathans began circling the sand lance at the very surface! The larger of the two rorquals opened its mouth to a frightful degree, its maw forced further agape by the density of briny seawater. The behemoth disappeared after this side-lunge display, and the surviving fish regrouped into an immense school that flowed like a river under the surface. This horizontal school began to rotate in a helix motion, and behind it trailed the finback whale, engulfing this feast as a railway locomotive seems to devour its tracks.

The chords of this orchestra were complimented by the percussion of a tuna that leaped with earnest between the two pulpits of the Aurora! Despite all this frothy excitement before us, our gaze was captivated by two mountains whose summits continued to rise from the ocean just mere mile away. We crept upon these megaliths colored in deep onyx, to discover them as two humpback whales! One of these monumental mammals revealed a recognizable fluke pattern, that of Spoon’s 2015 Calf!

This young whale was engaging in 2 minute dives amongst schools of fish, and was perhaps subsurface feeding by its own devices! Spoon herself could be observed just under the surface, her illuminated pectoral flippers betraying her every movement. Captain Chip calculated that lunge feeding was inevitable, and indeed the large mother resurfaced at the end of each shallow dive with a captivating display of said behavior. Spoon exhibited no bubble clouds or bubble nets prior to her next four exhibitions, and not one person on the Aurora was unimpressed by this mysticete theatre.

We were understandably reluctant to say our goodbyes to an ocean clamoring with life, but look with promise to the next concerto on Stellwagen Bank!

Peace and Love,

Rich