Friday, August 7, 2009

Whale watching

Hey everyone. Yesterday was yet another great day of class, I can't believe today will be our last one. After meeting at the state house and attending a hearing we took boat out to Stellwagen Bank for some whale watching. We were lucky enought to get to spot a few humback whales and learned that a good way to know that a whale s in the area is when there are these glassy circles called flutes, sailors/fisherman used to believe that ese circles were cause by oils that came off of the whales but we elarned that this is not the case that whales do not release any oils from their skin. I also learned that humpback whales do not mate for life and they go to greenland to mate for life. They typically travel alone, but are sometimes can be seen traveling in groups of 2 or 3. The first whale we able to see was mostly seen lumbering and would dive deep down into the water to search food. In this area the humpback whales main source of food is the sound eel.


After walking around the deck for a while Larissa and I were able to make our way to the front of the bottom deck where Jackie and Matt had grabbed a great spot that wasn't too crowded. At this spot I got a great view of the last whale we saw that almost seemed to be performing for the crowd. He was breaching repeatedly, which the guide said is quite rare for whale to breach this much. On top or th breaching this whale was doing plently of fin flips for the crowd, it almost seemed as if he was waving to the crowd everytime and the crowd really seemed to love it.

For Bruce's last question of whether we think it is ok to fish for whale, I would have to say that as long as they are not an endangered species that I think it would be ok. My reasoning for this being that if it is ok to fish for other types of fish such as tuna and bass why is would not be ok to fish for whales as well.

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