Cetacean spotting.
Sep. 19th, 2024 08:42 pmToday I had to tell someone that walruses don't live in the Hudson and how for where walruses live, the New York harbor is downright tropical. Then I asked her what her favorite pinniped was, and had to tell her otters are mustelids.
We were on a whale watching tour, so the topic of marine mammals was on everyone's minds. I'm still overheated despite my hat and the sunscreen. If I close my eyes, I'm on the rocking boat again.
I got there with enough time to chat with people for a while, and pick which seat I wanted. I thought about sitting on the boat's upper level, then went with a spot right up front. It was the right call because it meant I got to see a lot more sky. More sky and more clouds and more horizon, occasionally seeing a bit of rainbow in the clouds and the boat's spray. Seeing, by the tour guide's count, over two hundred dolphins and four humpback whales. It was a lot of dolphins all over the place, pairs and pods, sometimes surfacing and sometimes playing, once memorably jumping all the way out of the water and demonstrating the uncanny resemblance between dolphins and ocean waves.
Whales, too.
Like I said, four humpbacks. Two pairs. We didn't get very close and they didn't breach, and it was still enough to get a sense of how massive they were. I swear at one point one of them wiggled its dorsal fin a little bit. At every point we saw them there was an understanding we were only seeing a small piece of them, nowhere near the full scope of the animal. Twice we saw the flukes, once at a slight angle far away from the boat, once close to the boat and full on down the line. I think it was the same whale, going from the patterns, but I'm less sure of that than having seen one wiggle its dorsal fin. We could hear them when they breathed, and that was worth the trouble of getting out there, because it was such a familiar sound - something not unlike what I sound like when I have to take a big, deep breath - taken and shifted to an unfamiliar place while retaining enough of itself to remind me I was looking at a mammal. They weren't the color of the waves, as the dolphins were: they were the color of the water. Except for their tails, which were the color of the clouds.
Whale watching takes a lot out of you. It's not just all the sun and surf, and it's not all the rocking waves that made me feel like I was on a roller coaster. It's those plus having to be attentive and focused without being too locked in for several hours. Relaxed concentration is a skill I don't use much, and it had me dozing off a bit on the long subway ride back because I'd wiped myself out. You can't stare intently at a single piece of the ocean, or keep your eyes on one particular bearing. You're looking constantly, continuously, always on alert. Because there's whales out there. At least two people on the boat hadn't ever gone whale watching, which meant this was probably their first time seeing one. It wasn't a first for me, but it was close. My first time in a long, long time.
We were on a whale watching tour, so the topic of marine mammals was on everyone's minds. I'm still overheated despite my hat and the sunscreen. If I close my eyes, I'm on the rocking boat again.
I got there with enough time to chat with people for a while, and pick which seat I wanted. I thought about sitting on the boat's upper level, then went with a spot right up front. It was the right call because it meant I got to see a lot more sky. More sky and more clouds and more horizon, occasionally seeing a bit of rainbow in the clouds and the boat's spray. Seeing, by the tour guide's count, over two hundred dolphins and four humpback whales. It was a lot of dolphins all over the place, pairs and pods, sometimes surfacing and sometimes playing, once memorably jumping all the way out of the water and demonstrating the uncanny resemblance between dolphins and ocean waves.
Whales, too.
Like I said, four humpbacks. Two pairs. We didn't get very close and they didn't breach, and it was still enough to get a sense of how massive they were. I swear at one point one of them wiggled its dorsal fin a little bit. At every point we saw them there was an understanding we were only seeing a small piece of them, nowhere near the full scope of the animal. Twice we saw the flukes, once at a slight angle far away from the boat, once close to the boat and full on down the line. I think it was the same whale, going from the patterns, but I'm less sure of that than having seen one wiggle its dorsal fin. We could hear them when they breathed, and that was worth the trouble of getting out there, because it was such a familiar sound - something not unlike what I sound like when I have to take a big, deep breath - taken and shifted to an unfamiliar place while retaining enough of itself to remind me I was looking at a mammal. They weren't the color of the waves, as the dolphins were: they were the color of the water. Except for their tails, which were the color of the clouds.
Whale watching takes a lot out of you. It's not just all the sun and surf, and it's not all the rocking waves that made me feel like I was on a roller coaster. It's those plus having to be attentive and focused without being too locked in for several hours. Relaxed concentration is a skill I don't use much, and it had me dozing off a bit on the long subway ride back because I'd wiped myself out. You can't stare intently at a single piece of the ocean, or keep your eyes on one particular bearing. You're looking constantly, continuously, always on alert. Because there's whales out there. At least two people on the boat hadn't ever gone whale watching, which meant this was probably their first time seeing one. It wasn't a first for me, but it was close. My first time in a long, long time.
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