Online Edition Tuesday, December 05, 2000
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Thar she blows -- in Salem HarborBy ALAN BURKE News staff SALEM -- A 25-foot, juvenile humpback whale, with an unaccountable fondness for the North Shore, made a return visit to Salem yesterday. Unnoticed by nearly everyone, the massive mammal cruised Salem Harbor, running rings around mooring lines, dipping deep into the channel leading to the Salem power plant, and sailing breezily past the lighthouse on Winter Island. "All you do is watch the birds," advised an awed Assistant Harbormaster Jimmy O'Brien, as he shadowed the whale in a powerful, 20-foot outboard. "The birds eat bait fish, like herring, and so does the whale." Later, Salem firefighter Bobby Cook appeared in a dory, taking photos. When he heard the whale was out there, swimming a few yards from his house, he had only one reaction: "I'm going out in my boat." On fishing trips to the Stellwagen Bank, Cook has seen full-size whales breaching spectacularly. But getting near this one yesterday was tough rowing. Invoking the whaling men of yore, he briefly shipped his oars and said, "I don't know how you can harpoon one. You can't even catch them." "I don't think you could fit him in your boat," joked research scientist Kate Sardi from the Whale Center in Gloucester. Accompanied by two assistants, she was a passenger in O'Brien's boat. With clipboards and cameras, they were not so dispassionate that they didn't often gasp with excitement when the whale broke the surface. Even the power boat had trouble keeping up as the whale frequently dipped beneath the surface, disappearing for minutes on end, only to announce its presence some distance away with a noisy blow. Only occasionally, the animal would breach, the massive head rising from the harbor waters and then collapsing with a splash back into them. A thrilling sight at sea, it was all the more incredible with the steeples and chimneys of Salem and Marblehead as a backdrop. The whale seemed oblivious to the boaters, feeding intently. "It seems to be ignoring us," Sardi said. In the past two months the same animal has been seen in Boston Harbor, Lynn, Beverly and Gloucester. "It seems to be doing OK," Sardi added. While it is not unusual for a humpback whale to be solitary, she continued, most of its fellows had gone south for the winter. "This one is not interested in mating. It's not sexually mature yet." While the whale seems healthy, she said, its behavior is unusual. "To be staying within harbors like this -- it's the first time I've ever seen it. ... To work its way up and down the coast in different harbors is very, very unusual." Asked for an explanation, she shrugged. "It's kind of a mystery to us." Sardi and her team made efforts to observe and record the animal's behavior, its skin, smell and discharges. No determination could be made on the sex of the whale -- the physical differences between male and female are impossibly subtle, if you're not a whale. The whale lacks a name as well. Photos taken yesterday will be made available to whale researchers, to determine if this one has been identified before. "If it's a new whale and it's not in our catalogue, it will get a new name," says Sardi. She suggests "Salem." Once, the giant rose to the surface and came remarkably close to O'Brien's boat, seemingly alongside it, near enough to touch. And even when the whale submerged, the ghostly shape could be seen beneath the green waters, a thing longer than the boat, with an expanse of tail that might have whacked Cook's nearby dory to splinters. Further away, it snorted through its blow hole, the sound somehow familiar, a reminder that this is a relative, after all, who only returns from time to time offering a flip of its fins to land-bound, long-lost cousins. More information about this and other whales can be found on The Whale Center of New England Web site at www.whalecenter.org.
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