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| Nov. 8, 2009 |
| Written by office staff | |||
| 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.
 It wasn't until we had finished that leg and started down the western side of the ledge that we finally found some right whales! Unfortunately we did not find nearly as many as yesterday. We were only able to photograph 6 right whales, but we did find a mother and calf pair! This relative lack of whales could be due to the rough weather making it harder to see the whales, or there could be a change in food in the area. Yesterday we captured less plankton in our tows, but on the fish finder we saw that there were a lot of fish near the sea floor (right whales are exclusively plankton feeders, while other whales feed on fish like herring).We saw even more fin whales and humpback whales moving into the area today, so they could be coming in to feast on the fish. We saw Loon, Pinball, and Valley, all of whom are three adult female humpbacks who could very well be pregnant right now and trying to gain a few more pounds before heading south to give birth. Today, though, the plankton samples were much richer, so the whales may well return. The weather for the next few days looks like we might be able to get back on the water on Tuesday. I look forward to seeing what has change on the Ledge between now and then!
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| Last Updated on November 16, 2009 06:47 |