Day 32: A Whale of a Good Time

After a night of good sleep, Ellaine and I were up early for our next adventure. Roughly 40 minutes north of Boston is the town of Gloucester, Massachusetts, home to the famous statue that Gorton's fish sticks designed their logo from.

Settled prior to both Boston and Salem, Gloucester has long been an important fishing harbor. Over time, whaling became a less and less important part of the fishing industry, and as of today, has been replaced with tourism around the whales.

So we set sail with around 100 others and waited to see our see our first whale. We went out in the direction of the Grand Banks. We were specifically looking for the area where underwater plateaus force up nutrients from the bottom, creating rich algae blooms, which serve as the basis of the food chain the whales take advantage of (some whales inhale over 1,000,000 calories a day).

This was how every picture of a dolphin
turned out for us.  They were cool none the less.

At the 50 minute mark we saw our first Minke Whale break the surface. Garnering many gasps from the crowd, the captain hardly slowed down for us to ogle. What we didn't know was they knew about a pod of dolphins playing up ahead. We circled for them multiple times so that they could play in our wake and we even watched a few jump in the air excitedly.

Soon after, they found two humpback whales. We watched "Cantilever" and "Fulcrum" surface and dive multiple times. They would take two or three breaths at a time before diving deep to go on feeding runs, where they would disappear for 5-8 minutes at a time. 

Fulcrum taking a deep breath

It was a super cool day all around. My little kid mode was on over drive the whole time and I managed to avoid a serious sunburn, so all in all, a very good day. Thanks Ellaine for finding this and thank you Captain Bill's for taking us out.