Greetings Pelagic Power Rangers,
Our 9am expedition with Captain Jim brought the Cetacea to the Southeast Corner of Stellwagen Bank. Just six miles off the shore of Provincetown was a humpback whale emitting the short, bushy blows attributed to its species. This whale eluded us with a dive of several minutes, but before resigning to a new search this mysticete reemerged off our bow! The dorsal fin itself could yield to identification, but a mighty lift of the tailstock revealed the ventral fluke pattern of Convict.
 |
| Fluke pattern of Convict. Rich Dolan, BHC naturalist |
 |
| Unique dorsal of Convict. Rich Dolan, BHC naturalist |
The length of dives was soon reduced to three minutes, and each return to the surface began an approach toward our vessel. At one point Convict thrashed a wild tail, casting pelagic precipitation upon humans aboard the starboard pulpit. It was not until viewing the right side of the rostrum that we noticed turbercles ground down to pink stumps, a sign of subsurface feeding that was further verified by shoals of fish detected on our fish finder.
We departed our eastern whale for a humpback association that we passed earlier in respect to orbiting boat traffic. These whales of consisted of Pele and Cajun with her 2015 calf. We shared these whales as they traveled within a body length of one another, descending in synchrony on foraging dives. Our return for land was marked by a single full breach by Pele!
 |
| Pele flipper slapping. Rich Dolan, BHC naturalist |
Prior to our terrestrial return we were gifted the coordinates of ocean sunfish by Captain Deb and the Asteria! We did not leave the region until Jim found these bony behemoths, and find them we did!
 |
| One of two ocean sunfish. Rich Dolan, BHC naturalist |
Peace and Love,
Rich
No comments:
Post a Comment