When`s the Best Time to See Whales?

Summer
2012
143 Pleasant Street Portsmouth, NH 03801 (603) 431-0260 www.blueoceansociety.org
Blue Ocean Society for
Marine Conservation
A 501(c)(3)non-profit organization
dedicated to protecting marine mammals
in the Gulf of Maine through education,
research and conservation.
Board of Directors
Helen Brewster, Co-Chair
Nancy Anderson, Co-Chair & Volunteer
Coordinator
Julie Myers, Treasurer
Sandy Berkenbush
Wayne Capolupo
Nancy Kaplan Corbett
Jody Record
Staff
Jennifer Kennedy, Co-Founder & Executive
Director
Dianna Schulte, Co-Founder & Research
Coordinator
Patty Adell, Programs Coordinator
Candace Dolan, Hodgson Brook
Watershed Coordinator
Abby Gronberg, Programs Assistant
Research Associates
Beth Bentley
Jonathan Gwalthney
David MacLaren
Katie Murphy
Melanie White
2012 Summer Interns
Nathan Alba
Katie Conroy
Leah Danny
Erich Dietterle
Alicia Franklin
Christie Hilliard
Lindsey Myers
Kerry O'Connor
Kelsi O'Neil
Devon Robinson
Dominique Weilermann
—— THANK YOU ——
Major Sponsors/Funders
NOAA Marine Debris Program
New Hampshire Coastal Program
NH Dept. of Environmental Services
Cox Family Fund
SPS New England
Blue Ocean Music Hall
Waste Management
Isles of Shoals Steamship Company
Treehouse Toys, LLC
All of Our Volunteers!
This newsletter was printed with grant funding
from NOAA’s Community-based Marine Debris
Prevention and Removal Grants Program and
under the Coastal Zone Management Act by
NOAA’s Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource
Management in conjunction with the New
Hampshire Coastal Program.
When’s the Best Time to See Whales?
By Dianna
Schulte
When is the
best time to
see
whales?
We hear this question over
and over, particularly
after a “slow” whale
watching trip. My typical
tongue-in-cheek reply is, “I
will let you know in
October, after the season
is over, when the best time
was this summer.”
The truth is, predicting
when the whales will be at
their best each year is
nearly impossible, and it
also depends so much on
Clamp’s calf, June 2012
each person’s idea of
“best”.
Is it a particular
species, specific behavior
or just the sheer number
of whales that qualifies a
trip as the best? I already
know that my thoughts on
what
constitutes
an
(Continued on page 2)
Buy Less, Buy Local, Save Whales
By Willy
Jones
When I was
little, I let
balloons go. If
I ever knew that they
could hurt anything I
never would have done
that. Once I knew, I used
to get mad at kids when I
saw them letting balloons
go. Then I realized that
maybe they don’t know
that balloons can hurt the
animals in the ocean so I
started trying to tell them.
I have been doing
projects to help whales for
about two years. For my
first one, I built a
paper mache’ whale head
to show kids how balloons
and other litter gets
trapped behind whales’
baleen. My most recent
project is about the stories
of three whales and how
litter can hurt them and
o t h e r
w h a l e s .
I planned to build a
model of Jeffrey’s Ledge
and let kids pick up the
litter that Blue Ocean
Society has counted out in
the Gulf of Maine from
2005-2011. Building the
paper mache’ model was
easy, but finding things to
represent thousands of
pieces of litter wasn’t
easy—over 14,000 pieces
of litter were recorded
from whale watch boats
over
those
years!
I walked around a craft
store for a long time,
looking for things to
represent plastic bottles,
balloons, bags and cans
that were small enough to
fit in my model so kids
could pick out the litter
from Jeffrey’s Ledge. I
found some clear beads for
plastic bottles and silver
beads for cans, scrap book
mini balloon stickers that
even
said
“Happy
Birthday” on them. I
couldn’t afford to buy
2,946 of those stickers, so I
thought to use more
plastic beads in all colors
to represent balloons.
Then I looked at the
label to see where all this
stuff was coming from:
MADE IN CHINA. Every
single thing I wanted to
use was made in China. To
(Continued on page 3)
PAGE 2
S E A NO T E S
Appledore Cleanup Yields
557 Pounds of Debris
Continued from page 1
amazing trip are quite a bit
different than what others
may think.
Last
summer,
my
volunteer and I were
watching a group of five fin
whales surfacing together. I
was in whale heaven! 350
tons of fin whale lined up in
front of us, all spouting their 20-foot
tall blows like an airborne picket
fence! It was awesome!!
My
volunteer wasn’t as impressed.
They weren’t jumping out of the
water or anything. They were just
breathing.
But is there a better time of year,
or month, or particular weather
condition that should bring more
whales exhibiting more behaviors?
This is a great question. After 16
years of detailed data collection,
Blue Ocean Society has an
impressive database that could shed
some light on this. We know that,
on average, we see humpback
whales on approximately 50% of our
trips, while fin whales are seen
approximately 75% of all trips.
Atlantic white sided dolphins
average about 25% of trips. So when
your child pleads with you to take
her to see dolphins, you may want
to ask yourself, “Am I feeling
lucky?”
Still, this doesn’t answer the
question posed. The exact peak of
the whale season seems to vary
annually. Some years we see the
bulk of the whales in June, other
years it may be September, or any
month in between. Some years are
fantastic from start to finish while
other ye ars a re jus t slow
throughout. The short answer is
that the whales show up when the
food (primarily herring) shows up
and then the whales will follow the
food.
Weather can certainly play a part
as ocean storms can move the
plankton around, and the herring
feed on the plankton. See the food
web here? We see this scenario
frequently:
the whales are
abundant and appear to be feeding
in one particular neighborhood. A
storm comes through and those
WI NT E R 2 0 1 2
Cosmos, May 2012
whales are no longer found in the
same place. We need to do a bit of
searching to figure out where they
went. For example, one of our local
whale watching boats began its
season on May 26. That day, they
found over 15 whales. The next day,
May 27, they found four whales. A
week later, just one whale was
found. In the meantime, we learned
that one of the whales seen on the
26th was seen again a week later, on
June 1, about 44 miles away from
the original sighting.
Overall, the Gulf of Maine is a
pretty big place- over 33,000 square
miles of ocean. Jeffreys Ledge,
where we focus our whale watching
trips and research, is also quite
large: 30 miles long and 5-6 miles
wide. It is a productive area due to
the upwelling currents that
surround it based on its
bathymetry. The Gulf of Maine
contains many other productive
areas similar to Jeffreys Ledge and
the whales will move amongst these
areas all season searching for food.
Some days seem as if we are
searching for a needle in a haystack
while other days are extremely
fortunate.
In addition, we must remember
that most large whale species are
endangered and continue to face
many threats within their habitat.
Current estimates state that about
1,000 humpback whales, maybe
3,000 fin whales and 492 right
whales visit the Gulf of Maine
during the summer months. That
means, if they were all spread out
equally, we would find 0.14 whale
per square mile, or one whale per 7
square miles. With numbers like
that, I am always thrilled to find
just one whale in the expansive
ocean and am more than happy to
see that one whale just breathe.
By Jen Kennedy
One of our goals is to look for and
clean up accumulations of marine
debris on shore and underwater.
One area we hadn’t done much
work in was the Isles of Shoals—9
islands about 5 miles off the coast
of NH and ME.
We began our debris search with
Appledore Island—the largest, at
95 acres, and the home of the
Shoals Marine Lab, run by Cornell
University and the University of
New Hampshire. We work closely
with UNH (primarily NH Sea
Grant and UNH Cooperative
Extension) on our Marine Debris to
Energy Project, making Appledore
a logical first choice.
On Monday, June 11, we took the
fishing vessel Yesterday’s Storm,
captained by Lee Schatvet out to
the island. Five people picked up
557 pounds of debris over about 1/2
mile of coastline. We focused on 3
areas that were relatively
accessible and could be cleaned-up
with minimal disturbance to
nesting gulls. Top finds included 46
plastic bottles, 9 balloons, 12
lobster traps (10 were deemed
unfishable
by Maine Dept. of
Marine Resources), many pieces of
plastic and Styrofoam and 3 disks
from the Hooksett wastewater
treatment plant spill on 3/6/11.
We’ll have a lengthier report,
and more photos, in an upcoming en e w s l e t t e r
a n d
a t
nhmarinedebris.org. You can
also view a photo album at
facebook.com/BlueOceanSociety.
Thanks to NOAA and the Fishing for
Energy Partnership, Shoals Marine
Lab, Lee Schatvet and ME Dept. of
Marine Resources!
PAGE 3
S E A NO T E S
Buy Less, Buy Local cont. from page 1
import all of this stuff means that it
has to come across the ocean on a
massive container ship that could
easily strike and kill a whale. How
could I do a project about protecting
whales when all the supplies I
wanted to use were brought here on
a
c o n t a i n e r
s h i p ?
I read and saw pictures of how
large ships come into port with
whales dead on their bows. I had
researched about Boston’s shipping
lanes and how much boat traffic is
running right through Stellwagen
Bank, part of a national marine
sanctuary where so many whales
are feeding. Every time I see a
container ship while on a whale
watch I hope so much it doesn’t
hurt a whale.
Besides litter, whales are really
threatened by entanglement in
fishing gear and ship strikes. It
bothered me so much that I
expanded my project to tell people
about these threats, as well. So I
decided not to buy the beads, and
instead I spent time on finding
ways to tell people how to stop ship
strikes, control litter, and help
prevent entanglements.
Around this same time, I went to
my first farmer’s market. There
were all kinds of things there.
Chickens, bread, yarn, honey,
maple syrup, sprouts, peanut
brittle, and really good herb
butter. There were things I never
tried, but it was fun going from
table to table and trying all the new
things. I REALLY like alfalfa
sprouts now.
Adopt-a-Marine Creature
Sightings
As of 6/11/12:
Humpbacks:
Owl
Pinball
Fin Whales:
Fjord
Ladder
Other:
Gills (Basking
Shark)
Stripes
(Atlantic WhiteSided Dolphin)
Adopt a Marine Creature at
www.blueoceansociety.org/Store/
store.html!
All the farmers there were my
neighbors. Nothing at the farmer’s
market came on a container ship.
None of it was wrapped in plastic or
was made OF plastic. I think almost
every farmer there had vegetables
and eggs that were grown without
chemicals. It was a place I could go
and not feel guilty about the
whales.
I thought about container ships a
lot. I thought about all the times I
went to a toy store and wanted a
toy. I brought it home and it was all
plastic. A couple of years ago, I
think I stopped wanting those toys.
They would be fun to open, but I
never really played with them. For
my birthday, I asked my friends to
come to my party and instead of a
present, to bring something for the
animal shelter. The kids LOVED to
do that. Then when we dropped off
the food and treats for the animals,
I got to visit every single one of
them. I put the animal’s picture on
an email thanking the kids, maybe
they could get adopted that way.
I even had a Blue Ocean Society
birthday party and we just went to
a park and played. It was a great
party. We bought Blue Ocean Tshirts and sand eels for the kids.
They all tell me they will always
remember my whale party.
I gave my teachers two of Blue
Ocean’s adoptable pets, humpback
whales named Owl and Pinball, for
Christmas this year. I received a
handmade ornament of a whale
that was wrapped in a cotton towel.
During my project, somebody told
me that to help stop ship strikes, I
should buy less and buy local. I
thought that was good advice. Now
when I feel like I want something, I
think twice about whether I really
want and need it. I usually don’t.
It’s like that birthday present
feeling, at first it feels good, but
then it doesn’t.
My project is finished and I built
Jeffrey’s Ledge. It isn’t filled with
plastic beads for kids to see how
much litter is out there, but it does
have some handmade old-style
wooden lobster traps and buoys
inside it to represent the
Willy Jones works on a model of
Jeffreys Basin
entanglement threats to whales.
The lobster traps were made by
prisoners in jail in Maine. I found
them in a little store called Woods
to Goods in York, Maine, a store
that supports prisoners learning
how to make things so they can get
a job when they get out of jail.
When I told the man there about
my project, he showed me the little
tiny traps, and gave me a booklet on
how lobster traps work. He gave me
a handmade wooden lobster bait
barrel that a prisoner made. The
man working in the store said he
was a surfer a long time ago and
that the litter in the ocean now is
making him very sad and angry. He
was glad to help with my project,
and gave me some wooden buoys
too. I used them all in my project
instead of the little plastic beads. I
take my project all around to
different events in Maine and New
Hampshire, so someday you might
see it. I hope you do.
For more information on buying
local and photos of Willy’s
finished project, visit http://
blueoceansociety.org/News/
news.html
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Blue Ocean Society for Marine
Conservation
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