Massachusetts has rites of Spring, just like Iowa, Arkansas and Colorado do. Some of our rites involve whales coming for a visit at a certain time of year, just like they don't in Iowa.
North Atlantic Right Whales are entering our waters as we speak. They come in after plankton, using some primordial algorithm to know when the water temperature is just right to chow down on the microscopic organisms.
Right Whales are as rare as it gets, and are especially rare for both large whales and marine mammals in particular. There are only 500 left in the world. At the moment, 71 of those have been recorded as being in Cape Cod Bay as of Wednesday.
A mother and her calf were spotted in the Cape Cod Canal Tuesday, and another mom/baby were seen in Cape Cod Bay about halfway between Provincetown and Marshfield. Experts expect many more in the upcoming weeks.
The whales cruise the surface, filtering tons of plankton into their tummies. They often work very close to shore, and are visible to beachwalkers. Set up on a cliff (Manomet, Cedarville, Scituate, Saquish) if you can, height always helps when spotting. It involves more "getting lucky" than me getting laid, but even a bad day staring at the ocean is better than most good days.
It goes without saying that you shouldn't hassle these whales. They are very rare. Boats are required by law to keep a few hundred yards between them and any righty. A collision between a whale and a boat could take an endangered species off of the charts.
It's also good sense for the mariner. Look at how things ended for Captain Ahab, Quint, Joshua, Samuel L. Jackson... you don't want to mess with anything that can fit you in their mouth.
Cape Cod Bay has a group of Right Whales operating by her western shores this week.
It's sort of a rite of spring. The ocean waters get to the right temperature and the zooplankton prospers or gathers or whatever zooplankton does to attract feeding whales. The presence of this plankton draws in the whales, who feed to their content and eventually follow the plankton to the next hot spot.
The whales being drawn in are Right Whales, which are among the most endangered creatures on the planet.
Because of this, the Massachusetts Division Of Marine Fisheries is issuing a cautionary notice to boaters in western Cape Cod Bay.
There are five mother/calf pairs within two miles of shore between Duxbury and Sandwich.
Did we mention that Right Whales are very rare? Right Whales get categorized into three, uhm, categories: North Atlantic, Pacific and Southern. All are very rare, with the eastern version of the NARW numbering in the functionally-extinct teens. Our own population of Right Whales number about 400.
Cape Cod Bay (and the nearby-in-whale-terms Bay Of Fundy) are major feeding grounds for Right Whales, and they usually put in work here right around this time of year. You stand a good chance of seeing one if you prowl along any beach between Duxbury and Sandwich. If you can get some elevation, at like, say, the White Cliffs Country Club, your odds of seeing one increase substantially.
They tend to hug the coast, staying within 2 miles of shoreline. They are surface feeders, although they will dive for meals if need be. Look for their distinctive V-shaped spout, which produces corresponding V-shaped spout spray.
If one is nearby, they shouldn't be hard to see. They go about 60 feet long, about the size of a New York City subway train. The whale is considerably fatter, weighing about 100 tons.
Win a bar bet or ten by knowing that, at about 9 feet, they win the Largest Testicles On The Planet contest. Said testicles weigh 1100 pounds, about what the entire Wyatt Family (including Brau Strowman) in the WWE weighs. This is probably why the female Right Whales only mate about every 3-5 years or so.
A contributing factor with the once-every-Presidential-Election-year lovemaking desire cycle on the part of the female may also be due to the fact that Right Whale calves are 20 feet long and weigh as much as the New England Patriots' front seven does... at birth.
She has plenty of time. While no one knows how long Right Whales live, a human-sized life span seems to be about the norm. A baby Right Whale photographed in 1935 was still kicking in the 1995, before being killed by a ship strike.
Speaking of which, you want to keep your boat far, far away from any Right Whales you see. You could injure the whale, and you could get your boat sunk. For the safety of both mariners and whales, vessel operators in this area are strongly urged to proceed with caution, reduce speed (less than 10 knots), and post lookouts to avoid colliding with these highly endangered whales.
Right Whales get their name because they were the "right" whale to harvest during the Whaler days. Surface-skimming, lots of oil, weak fighters = "Right."
On a sad note, a whale washed up dead on Duxbury Beach yesterday. I don't believe it was a Right Whale, it was about 15-20 feet long. I believe that the town is going to bury it.
