Sea Hunter at Silver Bank | Special Humpback Whale Expedition Feb 11-18, 2023

We’ve made it back to shore again! Our third week out at sea was one for the books. The wide range of whales, weather and wildlife truly created a uniquely memorable trip.

Our Tuesday was the most beautiful day on the water that we’ve had so far and we look forward to more like it to come. The wind was a light 4-5 knots and there was barely a ripple on the ocean. Any whale breathing in the vicinity could be seen from miles away, their blows hanging in the air with no wind to dissipate it. You can only imagine how this impacted the visibility in the water. It was one of those exceptional instances where the difference between air and water was just shades of blue. And, luckily, the whales were ready to be appreciated in the magnificent light.

We found a mum, calf and escort early on in the day, but the calf was full of energy, enthusiastically  breaching, tail lobbing, pec slapping and doing every kind of behavior, keeping us out of the water for the moment. But, with the day as glorious as it was, and armed with GoPros and water-bagged phones everywhere, we watched from the topside and poked our cameras into the water to capture the trio as they repeatedly swam under and around our skiff. It was a really great show.

Just as we prepared to move on for some more settled whales, whales we could think about swimming with, the calf settled down and the pace relaxed. Very promising! We watched and waited to be absolutely sure it was appropriate to try to approach. You can’t ever hurry your way into a good in-water interaction, patience pays and today we were rewarded. Once settled in, we spent wonderful quality time with the three leviathans, eventually calling over our other skiff because this was an opportunity not to be missed. Between the clarity of the water and the calm curiosity of the calf every time he surfaced, it was magic. We found them again the next day, too, making them the stars among all the whales throughout this week determined to give us a show, both underwater and above.

But not every curious thing this week was a whale!

We also found… a pigeon; or the pigeon found us, really. On Monday, while Sea Hunter was on her mooring, a pigeon landed on the boat while seeking refuge and to take a break from flying. And how is this for coincidence? As it so happens one of our guests this week is a pigeon trainer and was able to ID it as a rock pigeon. It had an ID band on one leg and what looked like a tiny tracker on the other – we don’t know for sure. Our best guess is that he might have been coming from Turks and Caicos. Long-time CBA guide Jeff took this grey-feathered friend under his wing (see what we did there?) and nursed it back to health with a steady diet of bread, seeds, rice and water. It was a bittersweet morning a couple days later when “J Pidge” reached his full health and took his leave of our mighty vessel. We could have sworn we saw a single tear roll down Jeff’s suntanned cheek as his winged child, quite literally, flew the nest.

But that’s not all!

The next happened when we found a floating piece of what looked like scientific equipment: a hefty and heavy yellow buoy with antennae, wires, tie-wraps, eye bolts and other accoutrements. The array also had a plate attached ID’ing it as property of Cornell University Bioacoustics Research, with a phone number to call if found! We took it aboard and brought it back to the dock where on Friday Capt Gene spoke on the phone with an enthusiastic gentleman at Cornell by the name of Chris Tessaglia-Hymes. This what we learned.

What Chris told us is that what we found is Cornell Bioacoustic’s pop-up bouy #230 (PU230), one of a vast array deployed anchored to the sea floor along the US eastern seaboard to listen for North Atlantic right whales along the coast. Chris said he’d have to look back at the records for further detail. We eagerly awaited further news and when delivered it was more than expected! Here is what Chris said:

“Hi Gene, I dug into some field ops spreadsheets and found this info. PU230 (“Pop-up” 230) was deployed about 4 miles offshore just NE of Charleston, South Carolina, on June 3, 2016. The buoy failed to release during attempted recovery in late fall of 2016. The buoy surfaced on its own on December 28, 2016, before we could send divers to retrieve it. Unfortunately, despite sending out SeaTow to attempt find it, we could not get to it before it got swept out into the Atlantic by the Gulf Stream. On February 7, 2017, we opted to disconnect service for that ARGOS satellite tag (on top of PU230), since there was no hope of retrieval that far out into the Atlantic Ocean. So, in essence, this Pop-up has been circling around the Atlantic Ocean for about six years before your crew found it adrift at Silver Bank! The purpose of the buoy was to record North Atlantic Right Whale sounds, and it was one of a huge array of buoys deployed up and down the entire East Coast for NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Here’s a map of where it was deployed:”

Wow! There is even more to the story but the full story will require an entire post dedicated just about this. Watch for more on this later! But how amazingly cool that, in the end, it seems that even whale-recording devices are attracted to the Silver Bank…

And speaking of whale recordings, this week gave Capt Gene the perfect conditions to record a singing humpback whale. Tuesday had the nicest weather of the season so far with barely a breath of wind and hardly a ripple. These conditions are perfect for recording because there is almost no ambient noise from wind and waves, and the skiffs drift much more slowly allowing longer time with the hydrophone in proximity to the singer. For those reasons, setting out that morning it was Gene’s secret hope to find a singer to record. And we had a wonderful day but no singer until the last hour. Then with, a little help from Jeff and a fellow operator, Gene got dialed in right next to one, just a couple hundred yards from Sea Hunter’s mooring!

For most of the last hour of the day we were able to float motionless in the skiff above the singer, listening to every detail picked up by our Aquarian Audio hydrophone. The song was so powerful that even with the volume turned down we could hear the singer clearly through the deck of the skiff, listening as in a trance as the sun set toward the horizon. You can hear one of the recordings here and I feel comfortable predicting that this could easily be the best recording captured all season – conditions were that good. As always, the best way to enjoy this is to crank it up until the china rattles in the cabinet! Then you will begin to understand how it feels to swim with a singing humpback whale.

And we even still had a few planets in the night sky and couple of green flashes, too. Fantastic.

Until next time,

We wish you whale!

Capt Gene, Jeff & Cat