vignettes: there i was, surrounded by 15 huge whales for 7-1/2 hours

8/9/2019 VIGNETTES: There I Was, Surrounded by 15 Huge Whales for 7-1/2 Hours

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There I Was,

Surrounded by 15 Huge Whales

for 7-1/2 Hours


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Photo copied under terms of theGNU Free Do cumentat ion License , Version 1.2

Finback whales are the second largest creatures ever to inhabit this planet. Only blue whales are

bigger. Some finbacks are eighty feet long. Both species are also among the fastest whales.

Finbacks have been clocked at speeds up to 24 miles per hour.

My first close encounter with large whales occurred in August of 1971, over Stellwagen Bank, ten

miles off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Had I no witness to what happened, I'd dare not

commit this to writing, because the behavior of these whales defies everything written about them.

We were cruising slowly, taking the morning sun on the flying bridge and enjoying a fine, calmday. I was looking off to port, watching a sailboat, when Beverly shouted, "My God, a whale!"

Just then I heard what sounded like an old locomotive releasing a blast of steam close off our

starboard bow. By the time I turned to look, there was nothing to see but a cloud of vapor.

Beverly said the whale had gone under the boat, so I slowed the engines to an idle and shifted into

neutral.
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Moments later came another blast of air, and a beast more than twice as long as my boat surfaced

close aboard on the port quarter. I was stunned. Aside from a near collision with a sperm whale

when my submarine surfaced one day during the 1950s, I had never been this close to a large

whale. Our sub had been 312 feet of steel, unlikely to suffer more than a dent from a sixty-foot

sperm whale. My boat was wood, thirty-three feet long, and I had no idea what to expect from

this colussus.

As if this werent enough, we soon heard blows all around, and found ourselves in the midst of

fifteen whales! (A novice at the time, I had to consult library books later in the week to identify

them as finbacks.) The group included two mother-calf pairs. The calves were about twenty feet

long.

At the time I didnt know what these whales were or what their intentions might be. All I did

know was that there were a hell of a lot of them and most were twice the size of my boat! For all I

knew, a boat like mine had run down one of their babies and they were about to return the favor. I

decided to test my radio, in case a Mayday became necessary.

Fascination must have outweighed fear, though, because I shut down the engines, largely because

I wanted to hear the whales breathing. Cavernous was the only word to describe it. Shutting

down my engines may have encouraged the whales to remain nearby later experience with

humpbacks bore this out and I wasnt sure I wantedthem this nearby. At any rate, those

finbacks proceeded to circle us for the next seven and one-half hours! Often they passed within

thirty feet of my boat. Even the mothers and calves came quite close at times. From the flying

bridge, we had an outstanding view of them. I was to learn that finbacks commonly circle

underwater at high speed, on their sides, when feeding on schools of fish, but these finbacks were

spending most of their time at the surface, usually circling us at leisurely speeds. And they

werent on their sides. I never saw signs of feeding, though some whales could have been diving

deep to feed. The depth-sounder readings averaged about 180 feet.

At one point I nearly fell over the side, as a whale breached vertically some fifty yards from the

boat. That whale looked to be a good six stories tall as it cleared the water with all but its flukes,

then leaned back and to one side and thundered into the sea. The waves caused by its re-entry set

my boat rocking hard. I suppose I should have been frightened by this awesome display, but if the

whale had hostile intentions, why would it wait so long and breach so well clear of my boat?

As it leaped the whale had opened its mouth, enabling us to see what looked like a great

moustache hanging from the upper jaw. I later learned that this is baleen and it serves to filter

their food. We also got a clear view of longitudinal pleats in the throat and forebelly, which

books explained stretched out to twice a whales normal girth to hold tons of water and food. I

also recall seeing a large reddish-orange patch near the left flipper. There are records of such

coloration in finbacks, I learned, and theyre thought to result from overgrowth by diatom algae.

At this point, a good camera might have come in handy, but the only one I owned was a

Hasselblad facsimile, unsuitable for capturing nature in action. Besides, I had always found that

cameras get between me and the experience, so I seldom carried one aboard.


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After the whales had been with us for a few hours, Beverly broke out one of the boat rods and

baited up to do some bottom fishing. She loved to fish, and it never occurred to us that this might

not be a wise thing to do with fifteen whales nearby.

Beverly sat at the taffrail and lowered the weighted hook to the bottom. Immediately a whale that

had been circling us about fifty yards out, made a sharp turn toward us from dead astern, andsounded. Not daring to reel in the line at this point, we gripped the rail and prayed the whale had

nothing violent in mind. Just then the fishing line, which had been hanging vertical in the water,

swung outboard at a forty-five degree angle, bounced several times as it dragged along the whale's

side, then swung back to the vertical. Moments later, the whale surfaced about fifty yards ahead

of the boat and continued circling. We decided to play it safe, and did no more fishing.

From among the many sounds that whale must have been hearing through the water, it had

immediately sensed the introduction of our fishing line into its environment. How? The reel was

well oiled, and had been spinning freely with the click off. It made little or no noise as Beverly

lowered the line. The sinker was well above the hook; there should have been no clink of metal

against metal. How could the whale have heard the line descending? Possibly the finback sawBeverly lowering the line, but from underwater, fifty yards away? I doubt it. The whale must

have heard something, perhaps a slight strumming sound as the sinker held the line taut in a tidal

current. Whatever, the incident certainly demonstrated how keenly aware whales are.

That day was a rare experience, even more so than I realized at the time, for I learned that finbacks

seldom tolerate boats among them for minutes, let alone hours. By the time the whales finally left

us late that afternoon, my perspective on life in the sea had forever changed. I soon began

studying cetaceans at every opportunity, and will probably do so for the rest of my life.

While among the whales, we had drifted so far south (some 20 miles) that I could see the

amusement park at Revere Beach. Most of the rides had been abandoned, and would be destroyedin the Great Blizzard of 1978.

Some people hearing this account suggested that the whales may have been humpbacks, but surely

wed have noticed the long white flippers, especially when one of the whales breached. Besides,

as I later learned, humpbacks didnt begin feeding that close to shore until the mid-1970s, when

the inshore population of sand lances exploded. The humpbacks moved inshore to feed on them,

which led to the growth of the whale-watching industry.

I returned to the area the next weekend, this time with a friend's single lens reflex camera, and

photographed several whales having the same dorsal characteristics. They were identified by

experts as finback whales. None of those whales paid the slightest attention to my boat. I don't

recall whether I tried shutting down the engines. Probably not, because I was trying to stay close

enough to get good pictures. And I think that's the key to having close encounters with whales --

don't pursue them, let them come to you, and keep quiet.

I wrote this in 1983, twelve years after the event, and on first reading I began to question my

recall. But when I showed it to Beverly, she recalled the events just as I describe them here.


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Excerpted fromA Dolphin Summer, by Gerard Gormley, Taplinger Publishing 1985.

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Photos copied

under terms of the GNU Free

Documentat ion License,

Version 1.2
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