Sunday, August 26, 2007

Whale Watching

The Dolphin Fleet of Provincetown provides several daily trips on their vessels for whale watching. There are scientists aboard each boat and often during the trip they are collecting samples or making measurements of activity in the sea. They also provide excellent commentary to the passengers and answer any questions that arise. We took the 10:00 tour on Tuesday, August 2nd.

Our trip took us around the tip of cape and out into the Atlantic Ocean. It was a beautiful sunny day and the sea was calm. In anticipation, we waited and hoped to see our first whale.

It wasn't long, once we were in the open sea that the boat started to slow down and we were instructed to look out on the left side of the boat where we would see the tail of our first humpback whale. He was one of the whales that had been tracked by the Dolphin Fleet for several years and his name was "walrus" as he had a marking that resembled a walrus on his tail. Dolphin Fleet had documentation on hundreds of individual whales and in some cases knew the genealogy of the whales that we were seeing.

We went our a little further and the boat stopped again. This time a mother whale and her eight month old calf were swimming near the boat. The calf was very inquisitive about the boat and the people on the boat and reached out her fin a couple of times and waved to us.


As headed back, we saw two more humpback whales that were swimming together.

All in all, our whale watching expedition was great success. We enjoyed the sun, the sea and largest mammals of the sea!

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