Recently my partner and I took a friend from Michigan on her first trip East, spending a week in Dennisport on Cape Cod.
Part of our plan was to go whale watching, something we'd done many times. Our friend had never had seen the Atlantic Ocean, let alone a whale.
We booked three tickets on the Dolphin Fleet in Provincetown, on the tip of the Cape, and set out on a blue-sky afternoon to see more whales than we ever expected.
In fact, the marine biologist on board kept reminding us that future whale watch trips would never equal this one. He was probably right.
We saw 20-25 humpback whales, a finback mother and calf, dophins and a minke whale, as well as many sea birds.
These pictures don't begin to convey the thrill of having one of these creatures come up next to your boat and open its mouth to pull in fish and sea water. They dive, send up bubbles which attract small fish to the surface, then sneak up on them and plow through the pool of fish, taking in fish and water by the boatload.
Their baleen filter the water back out and keep the fish in. Then the whale swallows the fish down a gullet the size of a grapefruit.
These whales spend their winters south and spend months without food. Then they summer up north and eat practically nonstop. Imagine spending a few months eating so you don't have to eat for the rest of the year!
One whale swam right under our boat. Not to worry. He was just watching us.
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