"From Sunday night until late last night I was
on the CRESLI GreatSouth Channel
Cruise on the Viking Starship out of Montauk. CRESLI isthe Coastal Research and Education Society of Long
Island directed byProfessor Artie
Kopelman of Dowling College. Every year about thistime, CRESLI organizes a 52-hour trip east of Montauk
(with a stop atMartha's Vineyard)
to this remarkable place off the coast of CapeCod. The outbound trip was at night (I slept through
most of it) andby dawn Monday
morning we were on or near this fabled area. TheChannel forms the boundary between the famous Georges
Bank and theContinental Shelf
and, due to various processes of water movement (tides,
upwelling and currents from the Gulf of Maine), it is an
arearich in life. The presence of
a huge abundance of prey draws the
whales from their breeding grounds to the south. They come
here with their calves to spend the summer fattening up.
The number of whaleshere is
astounding. On Monday, we saw -- by actual individual count-- over sixty different Humpback Whales, half of
which were alreadyknown (and
named) from previous trips. And these were not justbriefly glimpsed off in the distance. We were
surrounded by theseleviathans --
sometimes individuals, sometimes a mother and a calf,sometimes groups of three, four and even six
individuals. HumpbackWhales are
not shy, retiring creatures. These animals, up to 50 feetin length and weighing in at up to 80,000 pounds,
leap out of thewater -- sometimes
clearing the surface in what is called a"full-body breach". As they breach, they flip over
and land on theirback or even on
their opposite side. And that's not all. They "spyhop" -- essentially standing up in the water to see
what's going onon the surface --
and slap the water with their long white flippers,their heads and their tails. When they dive, they
show the undersideof the tail;
the tail markings (and other marks) on each animal aredistinctive, making it possible to identify
individuals withconfidence!
All morning and, after a brief intermission, most of theafternoon, we were surrounded by these whales and
treated to theirperformances,
often so close to the boat that we were sprayed bytheir spouting and splashing. It was an amazing day. There were other cetaceans: two Fin or Fin-back
Whales (thesecond largest of all
the whales), perhaps a dozen of the smallerMinke Whales and large numbers of Atlantic
White-sided Dolphins whichcame
'porpoising' past the boat in groups (flocks? pods?) made up
ofdozens or even hundreds of
individuals.
What about the birds? Most of the birds out here are oceanicor pelagic species that are rarely or never seen near
land. By farthe greater number --
many thousands -- were Greater Shearwaters, a bird that
nests in the South Atlantic and comes to the North Atlanticas a winter visitor (our summer is their winter).
Among them were afew Cory's
Shearwater, a similar bird that nests in the Eastern
Atlantic and the Mediterranean and comes over here after
breeding.There were also some of
the small black-and-white Manx Shearwaters(they nest on both sides of the North Atlantic) and
one Caribbean-based Audubon's Shearwater, distinguished
from the Manx byits browner upper
parts and longer tail. There were numbers ofWilson's Storm-Petrel, a small sea bird that appears
to walk on the water. And, best of all, there were also
at least two identifiableLeach's
Petrels, one of which showed its distinctive rump markingsright by the boat in good light (the other was picked
out by itsdistinct mode of
flight). All these birds belong to the so-calledtubenoses, the large group of oceanic birds that
include thealbatrosses.
Both pelagic phalaropes were seen: a group of four Red-neckedPhalaropes at the Great South Channel and a single
Red Phalarope (apale buffy bird
that was probably a juvenile or a molting male) onthe trip home. There was one jaeger, a Parasitic.
Other birds seenwere a small
flock of peeps (almost certainly Least Sandpipers), bothArctic and Common Terns, Double-crested Cormorants (a
littlesurprising to see it out in
the Channel), Great Black-backed andHerring Gulls. On the way back, near Martha's
Vineyard and theElizabeth
Islands, there were Barn and Bank Swallows hunting over thewater. Not a huge number of species but very typical
of the NorthAtlantic in late
summer.
Day 2 dawned clear and full of whales but the fog moved inand by mid-morning we had to leave...."
For more information on humpback whales,
click here.
For links to earlier sighting reports and photos from Great
South Channel trips,
click here.
