My long-time friend (from way-back in junior high), Janna got a job this spring flying a small plane for a right whale survey off of Cape Cod. This is such a cool job for her, because she's been wanting to fly as long as I've known her, and now she gets paid to do it! I'm excited about the subject matter, too ...
See some of the pictures that wound up on BBC Earth News.
Here is an email she sent a few days ago (posted with her permission) :
From: janna greenhalgh
Subject: Techno whales
To: "Michele Matucheski"
Date: Tuesday, May 4, 2010, 4:05 PM
We flew today offshore from Cape Cod. What a day! The whales are moving out of the area, we have 11 more days and about 15 more hours left in the season. We didn't expect to see much and had a great survey. The north end had about 50 humpback whales spread out between 20 miles! As we approached the southern end about 20 miles off shore it started out "I see a blow..oh, and another, oh, and.. Oh my God..."
There were maybe 30 fin and probably Sei whales all feeding near the surface and about a dozen right whales scattered in them. Tough to keep track of for circling as they came up and down!
The fin whales look like giant tad poles when their pleats fill out in feeding. Even more cool is that this was very near the NOAA boat Deleware II, which I spent some time on! They had a small boat out and were tagging whales. We got a great couple photos of them doing this. I'll probably never see them, but it was cool to know they would get them.
And to top the good day off we saw Wart. The same whale we spent over two hours circling as the small boat tried, yet again, to get the ropes off of her. Three years of chronic pain was showing in her activity. The ropes had been successfully removed a couple days ago minus one and we were told to keep an eye out for her to see what her condition was. No ropes at all and a VERY active whale! Yeah Wart!
We saw another nick-named White Cloud that was paler than other right whales and had a white edging on its fluke. Very neat!
*********************************************************************************
More info at Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies.
There were maybe 30 fin and probably Sei whales all feeding near the surface and about a dozen right whales scattered in them. Tough to keep track of for circling as they came up and down!
The fin whales look like giant tad poles when their pleats fill out in feeding. Even more cool is that this was very near the NOAA boat Deleware II, which I spent some time on! They had a small boat out and were tagging whales. We got a great couple photos of them doing this. I'll probably never see them, but it was cool to know they would get them.
And to top the good day off we saw Wart. The same whale we spent over two hours circling as the small boat tried, yet again, to get the ropes off of her. Three years of chronic pain was showing in her activity. The ropes had been successfully removed a couple days ago minus one and we were told to keep an eye out for her to see what her condition was. No ropes at all and a VERY active whale! Yeah Wart!
We saw another nick-named White Cloud that was paler than other right whales and had a white edging on its fluke. Very neat!
*********************************************************************************
More info at Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies.
No comments:
Post a Comment