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Written by office staff
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We had a little better luck today then we did yesterday. Today we started on the center leg of Jeffreys and then headed to the west of Jeffreys in deeper water, an area we haven't surveyed in a while. We saw a lot of humpbacks, a few minke whales, about 75 white-sided dolphins, a handful of harbor porpoise, and a sei whale! Sei whales are always a good sign for us because they feed on the same food that right whales feed on. So if sei whales start to move into the area, then that means there should be the right type of food for right whales. We only saw this whale for a quick surfacing, but they have a distinctively large dorsal fin and tend to travel right beneath the surface of the water leaving flukeprints marking their path, only taking a breath every 15 seconds or so. Sometimes they can be confused for a small fin whale or a large minke whale due to their similar body shape.The sei whale was found about half way down the track line off to the western side of the Ledge, an area that we've yet to see any right whales in this season.
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Last Updated on November 23, 2009 11:21 |
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Written by office staff
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After another bout of rough weather, we were able to head back out on the water today. We headed up the eastern side of Jeffreys Ledge and then down the western side. We found a bunch of humpback whales, including Filament and Victim, and a few fin whales and harbor porpoise, but we only got a fleeting glimpse of a right whale. We only had 5 miles left until we came to the top of the eastern leg when we saw a right whale about 2 miles away. We continued to the spot where we saw it go down on a dive, but we never saw it again.
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Written by office staff
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November 11, 2009 23:46 |
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Today was a beautiful, calm day, albeit overcast, on Jeffreys Ledge. We headed up to where the whales had been over the weekend, with great spotting conditions. And despite scouring the area, we saw not a single right whales! We did see over 25 humpback whales (including some we hadn’t seen in years), over 100 harbor porpoises, Atlantic white-sided dolphins, and fin whales – but no right whales. Our plankton tows showed that there is still a plankton resource there, but the dominant whale species has totally shifted from right whales (whales that eat plankton) to humpbacks (whales that eat fish).
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Last Updated on November 23, 2009 11:20 |
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Written by office staff
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November 11, 2009 23:44 |
 What a difference 12 hours make! The wind picked up over night, which meant rough seas when we left the dock at 6am. We ventured up our "center" track line running up the middle of Jeffreys Ledge, with the wind at our stern and whitecaps all around us. Whitecaps make it harder to distinguish right whales from other species from a distance, since it is hard to see if the whale has a dorsal fin or not (right whales are the only large whales we see that do not), but still, their unusually distinctive "V-shaped" blows (see image) give them away. There were a lot of fishing boats on the central leg, but there weren't too many whales.
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Last Updated on November 16, 2009 06:47 |
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Written by office staff
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November 11, 2009 23:41 |
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We haven't been forgetting to update the blog - its just that November weather has kept us off the water for the last 10 days. We get used to looking for weather "windows" and jumping on them, and we have one now. Jennifer Tackaberry, our catalog and data manager, was the lead scientist today, and here is her report:
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