- December 24, 2024
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“Needle in a haystack” isn’t the analogy that first comes to mind when I think of searching for some of the world’s largest animals.
So I was surprised when, speaking to an auditorium full of volunteer whale-watchers at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience Saturday, Marineland Right Whale Program Director Joy Hampp described whale watching in just those terms.
Oh, come on, I thought. They’re whales. How hard could it possibly be to see a 50-foot-long marine mammal if it decides to come up for a breather?
Surely, I thought, it couldn’t be as tough as bird watching, where the animals you’re seeking have a way of disappearing overhead just as soon as you’ve got your binoculars adjusted.
After a tough morning out a few weeks ago with the Audubon Society, I figured, looking for something as large as a whale ought to be a cinch.
So early the next morning, I headed out with a group of experienced whale watchers — Patrick Schubert and his wife, Becky, and Carole Shaw and her husband, Edward — and found myself standing on a bench on a boardwalk, groggily scanning the waters off Palm Coast for a sign of an endangered North Atlantic right whale.
The Schuberts and the Shaws started filling out the mobile survey team’s paperwork, quickly jotting down observations about weather conditions like haze and wind direction.
“The first thing we do is see what’s out there,” Patrick Schubert said, checking wind direction.
Schubert, a 70-year-old retired teacher, has been doing this for 14 years and has seen dozens of whales, sometimes close to shore. “They’ll swim in water basically as deep as the length of the whale,” he said. “So you’ll see them in 50 feet of water.”
It was early on the first day of the right whale watching season, but I wasn’t worried. I knew what to look for.
To see a whale, I knew from Hampp’s lecture, I should scan the ocean for one or more of the following: a dark line in the water; a dark line surrounded by a white “ruffle” of sea-froth; a dark line topped by a jet of blow hole spray; or a dark line next to another dark line, presumably a mother whale with a calf.
No problem.
I raised my camera, using the zoom lens as a makeshift monocular.
But the distant ocean was covered with dark spots, now-there, now-gone as the light reflected off waves and clouds.
I zoomed in closer.
The lights and darks on the water continued to dance.
And then, I thought, I had it: There was a dark spot, just hovering near the horizon. The clouds passed over it. It stayed there. The light changed. It stayed there.
Next to me, Patrick Schubert raised a pair of high-end binoculars provided to watchers by the right whale program.
Cool, I thought. He saw it too. A whale. What else could it be?
“There’s a shrimp boat at 90 degrees,” Schubert said.
I zoomed in closer, noting the decidedly un-whale-like gaggle of machinery protruding from the top of my “whale.”
Hmmm. This was tougher than I thought.
Our group passed up and down the beach, driving from park to park and boardwalk to boardwalk, then stopping and getting out for 15-minute scans of the water.
Apparently, seeing a whale — especially an endangered right whale, the species we were really looking for — is a rare treat.
It’s so uncommon that once a whale is spotted, the Marineland Right Whale Program calls all of the other whale watchers so they can head out to see it.
When Carole Shaw saw her first, Patrick Schubert said, chuckling, she was so excited she jumped up and down.
But occasionally, the watchers will be treated to something extra special.
Once, Becky Schubert said, they saw a group of more than a dozen North Atlantic right whales near the Flagler Beach pier. There are only about 500 of the animals left.
Our hours of diligent searching Sunday didn’t turn up a whale, but we didn’t get away without seeing anything at all.
We were our way back to our cars from one of our last stops when Carole Shaw and Becky Schubert spotted a head sticking out of a sandy burrow about 15 feet away from the boardwalk: a gopher tortoise.
He didn’t quite carry the weight of the creature we’d been searching for. But, after only finding hay in the vast, blue stack that is the Atlantic, we were glad he stopped by to say hello. Really glad.
THINK YOU SEE A RIGHT WHALE?
North Atlantic right whales are 45-55 feet long, but most of their body — about 90% — stays below the water as they swim.
Unlike humpbacks, they don’t have a dorsal fin.
They have black, paddle shaped flippers — humpback whales have white, narrow ones — and their black tails have deep “V” notches in the center.
North Atlantic right whales move slowly, at about one or two miles per hour.
If you're viewing whales from a vessel, keep your distance: it is illegal to approach closer than 500 yards from a right whale, unless viewing them from land.
The Marineland Right Whale Survey Project appreciates citizen reports of any whale sightings. To report a sighting, call 1-888-979-4253.
For more information on whale surveying and identification, visit marinelandrightwhale.blogspot.com or aswh.org.
To volunteer with the Marineland Right Whale Survey Project, call 904-461-4058 or email [email protected].
