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Our fourth week with the humpback whales on the Silver Bank was just lovely. And this week we were lucky enough to be able to welcome back eight returning guests, too. It was great to be surrounded by so many familiar faces. For the first-time visitors it was a super-bonus to have such a host of well-practiced whale spotters and whale-swimmers aboard!
Here is our trip report, straight from the Captain’s log of Conscious Breath Adventures’ Captain Gene:
As always, it’s pretty much impossible to pick a favorite encounter of the week, although an easy contender could be Wednesday’s. Most of the morning we had been teased with mum and calf pairs fluctuating between periods of resting and sessions of swimming, just enough to keep us wet-suited and bootied, masks at the ready, all set to go, for a bit too long. Eventually we decided that a swim with these little families wasn’t going to work out and decided to move on – and almost immediately happened across a pair of sleepers. Jeff spotted them from around three hundred meters away and we quickly headed over to the “footprint”, the glassy patch of water created by the turbulence left behind when the whales dove, much like the calm in the wake of a passing ship (photo). But by the time we arrived at the spot the footprint had faded away. With adult sleepers, you never know quite how long they will stay down. They could come up for air as often as every ten minutes or so, or much less frequently. The average is usually around twenty minutes and our record observation is thirty-eight minutes submerged between breaths! With this in mind, Jeff decided to take a shot in the dark and estimate where the whales had fluked up. Lo and behold, it took him less than a minute of swimming and looking around before he came upon the two leviathans below, and the rest of the group was able to join them in the water. Now, this is where it gets interesting.
We were also able to ID an old friend, last seen years ago. As soon as Jodi hopped in the water on Wednesday with our two resting whales she was immediately able to recognize the female without any need for any ID service. “TW” is a whale who has been around on the Silver Bank for twelve years now – first sighted by Conscious Breath Adventures in 2011! (In the photo she is the whale near the top of the frame, pointed toward the viewer; click for larger view) She has had three calves here on the Silver Bank over the years, and she is very easy to identify since her left pectoral fin looks like the initials “TW” have been painted on by nature. It was incredible to know exactly who you were in the water with, and she was just as easygoing and peaceful as we remembered her. What a great whale! Hopefully we will see her again in the coming weeks.
TW’s escort never showed his fluke so we don’t know who he was but he was more than happy to put on a great show for us. The pair stuck around long enough for our second boat to come and experience the magic of this extremely curious escort, who circled and patrolled below our groupmore than five times while we were in the water, sometimes very close. One of our returning guests exclaimed that in his five trips to the Silver Bank, that was his favorite interaction ever!
The rest of the week brought fine weather and many more nice swims, including more sleepers (the escorts have been so cool this year) and some mellow mums and calves who gave us the chance to appreciate them. In fact, our whale swims lasted right through to the end of the week, with Gene’s group spending the last minutes of the Thursday sun with an extremely inquisitive mum , calf and escort. Curious calves are a favorite, but having all three simultaneously check us out so closely was a special treat.
And one thing that was especially noteworthy about this trio was, again, the escort. This guy had obviously been very badly entangled at some point in his past. He was missing the end of his right pectoral fin, which had been amputated, he had a deep line scar across his back, as well as a deformity to his jawline from where a rope through his mouth had sawed or cut away some of his lip. By all appearances it was a serious incident and we suspect he may have had help to get free. If not, he is one very tough and lucky whale. We got his fluke photo and are going to see if we can find his backstory, too (that is him on the left in the photo above, and his fluke on the left in the image at the bottom of this Report). If we learn more we will share it here.
With all the high notes this week, there was one sad note as this week was the last week of the season for good friend and long-time CBA guide Jeff Pantukhoff of the Whaleman Foundation. Since the beginning we’ve been lucky to have Jeff along for the first half of the season here on the Silver Bank, after which he heads down to San Ignacio Lagoon, Baja Mexico, to conduct a series of encounters with the Pacific grey whales that call the lagoon their winter home, too. We will miss Jeff the rest of the season but don’t worry, he will be back in 2024. Good luck, Jeff, and happy whales! In the meantime we will hold down the fort here for the next six weeks – us and the wonderful humpback whales.
Thanks until next time,
Capt Gene, Jeff & Cat