Maine Windjammer Whale Watch
Ben McCanna
(page 1 of 2)
An hour before breakfast, Captain Mike motored the Angelique out of Swans Island’s Burnt Coat Harbor and into the Gulf of Maine. We’re heading toward Mt. Desert Rock, a tiny island roughly 15 miles offshore.
Today is our whale watch, but Captain Mike is already downplaying our chances.
Every year, Captain Mike schedules a whale watching trip, but for the past two years, Mike’s been (as he puts it) “skunked.” Captain Mike blames the poor luck on overfishing. It used to be that whale sightings off Mt. Desert Rock were a near certainty, but with the depletion of the fishery, the whales have perhaps gone elsewhere to find food.
The fishing in the Gulf of Maine has been so dismal, it’s been years since Captain Mike and the mate Dennis have seen the massive Russian trawlers that dragged these waters for tons upon tons of seafood. And all along the coast of Maine, the once-lucrative fishing industry has dried up; now only lobsterman can make a decent living from harvesting the sea.
Heading for Mt. Desert Island.
Nonetheless, this is a near-perfect day for a whale watch. The winds are light and, aside from a small chop, the sea state is gentle. If there are any whales out here, we’ll see them.
And we do. About midway between the mainland and Mt. Desert Rock, Captain Mike sights a whale spout. The passengers all rush to the foredeck, their faces obscured by digital cameras. We scan the horizon and see another plume of gray mist shooting skyward about 300 yards off our port bow.
Then nothing. The whales dive deep underwater and we see no trace of the spouts again on this vast slate-gray sea.
We continue motorsailing. In addition to whale spouts, Captain Mike keeps his eyes peeled for shearwaters and gannets—seabirds whose dives sometimes indicate the presence of whales. (The birds feed on the same schools of small fish that whales do.) Shearwaters resemble sea gulls, but they’re larger with narrower wings, smaller tails, and hooked bills. We spot a small raft of lazing shearwaters, but, alas, no whales swimming beneath them.
By lunchtime, we motor off the northern shore of treeless Mt. Desert Rock.
Since the early 19th century, Mt. Desert Rock has been home to a lighthouse. Then, starting in the 1950s the island was a U.S. Coast Guard station. Later, in the early 1970s, Bar Harbor’s College of the Atlantic (COA) took an interest in Mt. Desert Rock. The upwelling currents here bring large amounts of marine life to the surface creating a prime location for researching humpbacks, finbacks, northern right whales, porpoises, dolphins, and seals.
Sailing off Mt. Desert Rock.
Posted on Monday, September 15, 2008 in Permalink
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