MOTHER & CALF HUMBACK WHALES! FIN WHALES! MINKE WHALES! BASKING SHARKS! WHOOHOO!!!!
I AM WRITING IN CAPITAL LETTERS COS I AM SO F*CKING EXCITED I SIMPLY CANNOT CONTROL IT!!!! AFTER WATCHING THE BBC'S BLUE PLANET SERIES, I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE FASCINATED WITH WHALES - THE LARGEST MAMMALS ON EARTH!!! Do you know that the BLUE WHALE(the largest) is even bigger than any large dinosaurs that had ever walked the surface of the earth? I wish I could turn back time and become a marine biologist instead of a business executive.
Anyways, we dropped by Boston last weekend to visit a friend and found out it was the perfect season to do whale watching just 30miles off Boston. There is a whale feeding ground and you can feast your eyes upon these magnificent creatures of the deep where they seem to be congregating in more numbers as the years pass for some unfound reason. Oh, what a big feast for thy eyes...!!!
We had left the harbour with hopes of seeing some(maybe 2-3) whales but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I would be seeing 3 types of whales(tho' I honestly couldn't tell them apart just by looking at the fins; remember - I am not diving!) and even a basking shark(again, i couldn't make it out from the boat...just a fin bobbing here and there)!
These humpbacks are acrobats of the ocean and they do put up quite a show indeed! When we first spotted them, they were spouting from the two blowholes and the spray can shoot up to 3-4m above water! We were warned of halitosis(bad breath) of the whales but spared the torture(thank god). The adult humpbacks we saw were ranging in length from 10 to 14m(almost 1/2 of our catamaran!
These whales eat an average of 2000-2500kg of plankton, krill and small fish EACH DAY! They feed by gulping a large volume of water and then filtering the water out from its bristle-like baleen. An impressive technique they use in cooperative group hunting is by bubble-net feeding and each time these whales dive down, they release a wall of bubbles (which we can see here in the pics) which trap their food within the wall and push the fishes and all into a concentrated mass to the surface before they spiral swim up to the surface with a giant satisfying gulp.
In the distance, we saw a couple of the ballet humpbacks breaching high out of the water and doing a graceful pirouette and slapping back into the ocean with a big splash! AWESOME!!! Hip, hip, hooray!!!! They also "skyhopped", i.e. they poked their head out of the water for a peek-a-boo at us humans(really cute!). I think this is the best spent US$31 ever! I think we saw a total of 10-12 whales(lost count!) and there were at one point a total of 5 whales doing the open water feeding right next to the boat and I think I could hear my heart singing. I would have given anything to be able to dive and observe them underwater and if I am lucky, to hear them sing their eerie songs to me... *dreamy*
I AM WRITING IN CAPITAL LETTERS COS I AM SO F*CKING EXCITED I SIMPLY CANNOT CONTROL IT!!!! AFTER WATCHING THE BBC'S BLUE PLANET SERIES, I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE FASCINATED WITH WHALES - THE LARGEST MAMMALS ON EARTH!!! Do you know that the BLUE WHALE(the largest) is even bigger than any large dinosaurs that had ever walked the surface of the earth? I wish I could turn back time and become a marine biologist instead of a business executive. 
Anyways, we dropped by Boston last weekend to visit a friend and found out it was the perfect season to do whale watching just 30miles off Boston. There is a whale feeding ground and you can feast your eyes upon these magnificent creatures of the deep where they seem to be congregating in more numbers as the years pass for some unfound reason. Oh, what a big feast for thy eyes...!!! 
We had left the harbour with hopes of seeing some(maybe 2-3) whales but never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I would be seeing 3 types of whales(tho' I honestly couldn't tell them apart just by looking at the fins; remember - I am not diving!) and even a basking shark(again, i couldn't make it out from the boat...just a fin bobbing here and there)! 
These humpbacks are acrobats of the ocean and they do put up quite a show indeed! When we first spotted them, they were spouting from the two blowholes and the spray can shoot up to 3-4m above water! We were warned of halitosis(bad breath) of the whales but spared the torture(thank god). The adult humpbacks we saw were ranging in length from 10 to 14m(almost 1/2 of our catamaran! 
These whales eat an average of 2000-2500kg of plankton, krill and small fish EACH DAY! They feed by gulping a large volume of water and then filtering the water out from its bristle-like baleen. An impressive technique they use in cooperative group hunting is by bubble-net feeding and each time these whales dive down, they release a wall of bubbles (which we can see here in the pics) which trap their food within the wall and push the fishes and all into a concentrated mass to the surface before they spiral swim up to the surface with a giant satisfying gulp. 
In the distance, we saw a couple of the ballet humpbacks breaching high out of the water and doing a graceful pirouette and slapping back into the ocean with a big splash! AWESOME!!! Hip, hip, hooray!!!! They also "skyhopped", i.e. they poked their head out of the water for a peek-a-boo at us humans(really cute!). I think this is the best spent US$31 ever! I think we saw a total of 10-12 whales(lost count!) and there were at one point a total of 5 whales doing the open water feeding right next to the boat and I think I could hear my heart singing. I would have given anything to be able to dive and observe them underwater and if I am lucky, to hear them sing their eerie songs to me... *dreamy*
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