Special to The Star-Herald
Say, have you ever looked a right whale in the eye? Try it sometime. The right whale is the whale that is on the endangered species list and keeps getting entangled in lobster fishermen’s gear along the coast. Many of them are injured or killed by large ships traveling in their waters.
The right whale is so named because it is fairly slow moving and was easily overtaken in a rowboat, and because of its vast amount of blubber, causing it to float when killed. There are only about 350 left in the world.
It all began when Yankee magazine spoke with me about my joining a group of whale enthusiasts, who would be accompanying whale research people scouting for right whales in Maine coastal waters. Scott Kraus, research associate and marine mammal research coordinator from the New England Aquarium in Boston, was conducting research out of Lubec. I did join the group for that trip, and then had a second opportunity to join the research people themselves for a right whale survey where they actually count the right whales. Now that trip was something else!
We left Lubec Harbor just as the sun was rising in the east over Campobello Island and the water was as smooth as a mirror. I was ready for any rough water, with a “transderm scop” patch behind my right ear, to ward off any possible seasickness. It worked. The research boat was a converted lobster boat, which put us just a few feet off the surface of the water. The skipper, Edwin “Butch” Huntley, was in communication by radio with a spotter plane that was canvassing the Bay of Fundy for any sign of the whales. As it turned out, we went nearly to Nova Scotia before any sighting was made. As the whales are low in the water, what is first seen and heard is the whale “blow” when a spray of water is shot into the air. I was disappointed when the research people would yell, “There’s a blow.” Nobody said, “Thar she blows,” except perhaps me.
En route, we were joined by about 100 white-sided dolphins, 50 pilot whales and several humpback whales. The pilot whales traveled in groups and raced along through the water right next the boat, like living torpedoes. The dolphins seemed to be everywhere at once, streaking through the water, under the boat, darting ahead of us and throwing themselves completely out of the water. Wow!
We got the word that right whales had been spotted. Butch swung his boat around and gunned it to the sighting area. As we came up to a whale calf bobbing in the water, he shut his engine off. The calf was apparently taking a nap. I began to juggle cameras back and forth, shooting first in color, then in black and white, and losing my place as to which camera contained which film.
Then Mom appeared on the scene coming right toward us. She circled the boat so close that with a short telephoto lens, I was not able to get more than just her head in the viewfinder. I could have actually touched her with my hand, not to mention a 10-foot pole. You no doubt have heard of “buck fever”, well, I had “whale fever.” I was so excited I almost jumped overboard. Well, almost.
Kraus and his people were busy taking their own photos, which they would use later to possibly identify whales seen over a three-year period. “We use scars and other markings for identification,” Kraus said. “Each right whale has callosities, a distinctive growth pattern on its head, its jaw and around the blow hole. These growths, white or yellowish in color, are caused by whale lice.”
As the converted lobster boat was small to begin with, a small cabin-like structure had been built on the boat’s roof as sort of a lookout post for spotting whales easier and for the skipper to control the boat. It was here I interviewed Kraus as we sped through bumpy waters. I grasped my tape recorder with one hand and hung on to the boat with the other. It was interesting, attempting to carry on an interview conversation while trying not to dump myself off the boat at the same time.
The researchers have seen some of the same whales repeatedly and have given them names. Phoenix is a mother and grandmother. In 1997, she was entangled in fishing gear but managed to escape with only a distinctive lip scar, and Snowball got his name due to a unique scar above his right lip that resembles a large, white snowball.
As a research team, we were able to get close to the animals. The legal distance limit is 500 feet. The right whale has no dorsal fin, but it does ride high in the water, and when the behemoth dives, its flukes (tail) flip up causing a gush of water. Sometimes the whale will swim along on its side and raise a flipper, as though in greeting. After a whale has executed a dive, a small patch of flat water is left and this is referred to as a “footprint.”
I wrote an article of the second trip for a General Motors (GMC) magazine.
From the bay, as we cruised into Lubec Harbor, the sunset was beautiful. If this had been a movie ending, this is where the couple would be silhouetted together.
Photo courtesy of Voscar
THIS RIGHT WHALE, spotted off the Bay of Fundy, seems to be waving hello.
Photo courtesy of Voscar
HERE COMES MOMMA, one of the remaining 350 right whales left in the world.
