Summer home - no utility service - so what?
Mother and baby Humpback whales
Whale surfacing with mouth of food. Shark in the foreground.Whale is dumping extra water out as it closes the jaws on the fish it has caught.
This dinner is almost complete.
Whale arching over to dive again for food while shark just rests on the surface.7/12 Thursday We took a whale watching tour that carried us out about 22 miles into the Bay of Maine to the Stellwagen Bank feeding ground. We were on our way to see Pilgrim Rock and some sights in Plymouth when we found this tour. The weather was really nice, so on the spur of the moment we signed on for the trip. It was a really great decision because the seas were calm with swells running about three feet at times. The temperature was also great to be on the water even if the water was about 55 degrees.
Apparently this was a very special sighting day and time as Kathy, our naturalist guide said she had been doing this 13 years and this tour was likely the one with the most sightings. We also had a basking shark swim up to the boat with the mouth open wide. This shark has small teeth like a baby and has no appetite for anything except plactin in the water. This shark is the second largest behind the great white. This one was estimated at 22 feet in length. Normally the shark and whale don’t feed in the same area at the same time, but there appeared no problem with the shark swimming very close to the whales while they fed as seen in one of the pictures. The shark even swam almost up to the boat making some great photos for some aboard – but not me!
Kathy, the naturalist, has been doing this tour while holding a position as a senior high school science teacher responsible for classes like marine biology. She took six years off from the high school job to have kids, but we are not sure if she took the same time away from the whale tours. She really had excitement for the job and sharing the message of saving the whales and other sea life through activities such as recycling.
We found the whales and likely saw as many as 20 representing 3 species found known to be in this area. We saw the Humpback whale that you see on TV programs like Discovery or National Geographic. They feed on small fish that are about the size of an adult finger in width and 7” long. The whales slap the water with the tail causing the fish to bunch together, then the whale dives down through the bunched up fish scooping them up with a lot of water. The whale then surfaces with the mouth open allowing a lot of the water to drain out of the mouth while trapping the fish. It then closes the mouth forcing water out of stretching membranes under the lower jaw. These membranes allow water to flow out but not the fish. Then the whale swallows the fish and begins looking for the next gulp. The whale needs to gain as much as 8.000 pounds so it can survive through the winter.
While out there we saw Finback whales that only glide up to the surface for air and arch back over and down gracefully without any great display. There were also smaller Minke whales there feeding. Only the Humpback is the showy whale while feeding.
In the Plymouth area where we departed, there are some homes on a peninsula that must supply their own power and water to the homes. Of course, these are only summer homes. They must also access their property by 4-wheel drive vehicles with a special permit. This special permit to gain access to specific areas is rather common in this area. One family had a nice home with solar water heater and wind generator, the latter which was likely able to provide power to more than one home. Someone had pulled an RV into the area as a home. Likely this was not a bad choice as it had lower exposure to the wind off the bay.
As for the Plymouth Rock, we stopped there to take a look but this icon is only an estimated 1/3 the size of the original rock. This rock has had a sorted life having attempts to move it causing it to break into two rocks, then one part being used as a foundation for a wharf while the other part was moved to a town square. Now the top portion of the rock is in a monument designed by the same person who was instrumental in the design of Union Station in Washington DC and Penn Station in Baltimore. At best, it was very anti-climatic to the rock we had envisioned for years since learning about this rock in hour history classes many years ago.
Check the next post for added pictures only.
