We’re just back from another Silver Bank adventure! Here is the trip report, straight from the Captain’s log of Captain Gene:
Wow, have we finished Week 7 already? It feels like just yesterday that we posted out our last Cruise Report. Is it just us, or is this season going faster than any other before?
This past week has been a roller coaster. We went from Sunday morning, with the calmest crossing of the entire season, to a veritable downpour and winds over 30 knots on Thursday! Fortunately, those Thursday winds passed through quickly while we watched our copy of filmmaker Tom Mustill’s excellent humpback whale documentary, The Whale Detective. It has been a hit with our guests all season (and I watch it every time it shows)! If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it soon!
After the storm, and after lunch, we headed out for this last afternoon and quickly found a female accompanied by escort and challenger males. The two males were REALLY putting on a show – not just for us, but to try to win the affection of the female. The males were fighting very aggressively and we even got to see the escort lunge on top of the challenger, atempting to hold him underwater so that he couldn’t take a breath. It was getting especially violent when the female threw off a giant peduncle throw – a behavior which can indicate annoyance or disturbance and can mean “okay boys, that’s enough, chill out now”. The guys were definitely still bickering amongst themselves, but she really asserted her dominance and they calmed right down! It is always super cool to see an evolution of behaviors like this.
But, in other news this week, we were a little nervous that we might have a stalker out on the Silver Bank… there’s a mum and calf that we have encountered three weeks in a row now! It happens but that’s quite uncommon, and so is mom’s behavior. If you’ve been out on a trip with us before, you probably know that we like to approach the whales once they leave the surface and dive down to rest. When they are resting deeper, as opposed to at the surface, a group of ten humans plopping into the water with their cameras and swimming over to admire them tends to be better received than a direct approach on the surface. However, this mum and calf seem to be the exception to that general rule. For the last three weeks, we’ve come across the pair with mom logging at the surface, usually for twelve or more minutes at a time, and calf resting on her nose. Every time we’ve tried to approach them underwater as usual they sit for a minute or two before gently swimming away. So we tried something different – we all slipped quietly in the water together and approached the sweet duo while they were resting at the surface. And it worked. It worked three weeks ago, it worked again two weeks ago, and this week when we came across them (on Monday, Tuesday AND Wednesday) it worked again. And by this week, mum had picked up an escort too! The encounters on Monday left us especially breathless. The escort hovered in the background for most of the morning, but the mum and calf were ready to get up close and personal. At one point our group were floating in the water when they came right up to check us out together – we even had to backpeddle a little bit to keep a respectful distance. With water so bright and blue and sun rays scattered across the surface it was just beautiful.
This mom is very easy to identify, not just because of her relaxed water behavior, but also because of her unusual dorsal fin,which is noticeably flat – almost completely missing. We were trying to decide whether this is genetic, or due to some injury; it wasn’t clear. She doesn’t have too many scars, but it’s just so unique. It is great to have this excellent identifying feature to help us recognize this individual so many times!
On the topside, this week continued the fantastic action that has been going on all season. Whenever we are not swimming with whales, on top it seems like the whales notch up the energy a little bit more every week, with pec slapping, lobtailing, and plenty of high-energy breaching, sometimes with mom and calf going at it simultaneously. The shows have been really good, and up close and personal, too. Sometimes it definitely feels like the calf is showing off to the boatloads of yelling and hollering visitors, and the photographers were all very happy, too.
Now we are seven weeks done and what fun it has been, with just three weeks left to go. The time will pass very fast now, you watch! We will see you here again next week.
Thanks again for reading,
Gene, Cat & Simon