Friday, August 2, 2013

Cape Spear – Whales

After witnessing the wonderful sunrise, Meriam and I decided to walk along a small bay immediately adjacent to Cape Spear. Almost immediately we spotted a Humpback whale in this small area of water, no more than 100 yards from us. As we watched, he began to roll and splash the water with his fins. We had previously been told this was how they “herded” their meals. The humpback whale is the largest baleen whale, weighing many tons. Since they have baleen, they do not directly eat (as in chew) their meals, rather they sift their meal through their baleen (imagine a rather fine toothed comb instead of teeth.) We watched this and several other humpbacks as they swam around the point a Cape Spear.

Later in the afternoon, we returned to Cape Spear and spotted several more humpbacks off the other side of Cape Spear. All-in-all, a wonderful day of whale watching from the shore!

(Excuse the rather poor focus on several of these pictures. I think I got so excited I forget to concentrate on my camera settings!)

You think this fisherman is “in the fish?”

The humpback is using his fippers to stur up his meal

Here he is rolling

This is one big sucker! Note the light area under him. This is his belly

So to get a perspective on his size, note the seagull in the upper righthand corner of the photograph

Another humpback off the other side of the point