ken zirkel

As our final adventure of the Cape Cod trip, we took a whalewatching cruise with Dolphin Fleet of Provincetown. I’ve been whalewatching three times previously, twice from Provincetown and once from Nova Scotia. Each trip offered tantalizing glimpses of the mighty giants, awesome in their wild freedom but always mysterious, distant glimpses. After all, whales are among the few animals you can’t view in captivity, but can only be experienced in their own habitat (well, except for a few belugas we’re fond of).

Wife had accompanied me on my first whalewatching trip, over ten years ago. On that trip she took seasick, and was wary of going out to sea again. Son, on the other hand, has been fascinated by whales ever since he saw the belugas at Mystic Aquarium. His favorite plush toy is a “baby” beluga whale. And daughter seemed to share Son’s enthusiasm for the animals. So I thought it would be a fine excuse for a Cape Cod excursion. Wife bravely agreed to go along with this plan.

We booked an early tour this morning from Provincetown. The seas were a bit rough going out, and the kids were visibly nervous about the whole thing. They weren’t confident about leaving the safety of the warm enclosed deck as the boat sped to the whale feeding grounds. Finally the ship reached the whale feeding area.

And the whale viewing was spectacular. We viewed at least a dozen individuals, probably more like twenty. We saw whales in couples and singly. We saw many fins and flukes. We saw several whales come quite close to the boat. We saw several species, including humpbacks, finbacks, and minkes (not to mention some porpoises). We saw humpback mothers with their calves. We saw some interesting behavior patterns: feeding by blowing rings of bubbles. A mother humpback sitting with her head out of the water for a few minutes, with her mouth open, feeding on krill at the surface. And Son and I, at the head of the boat, saw an unforgettable site: a humpback whale breaching the surface. It jumped far enough that its flippers cleared the water and fell sideways, just like the nature films on TV. It was an incredible sight.

I spent most of my time huddled at the bow with Son, giving him my full attention. He was visibly nervous at being on the rocking, tossing boat, but he was very excited to see the whales. He seemed genuinely surprised and excited by them, often exclaiming “wow” when he saw a fin or a tail, and “double wow” for the many pairs of whales we saw together. But in sharing the moments with him, I did not have the chance to photograph these remarkable sights. Toward the end of the trip I did grab my camera for a snapshot of a finback whale (below). But this photo really gives very little impression of what we saw together on this day.