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whales

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    An Odd Pod off Nantucket and Rambunctious Dolphins in Provincetown

    Fishing heats up with bass, schoolie-size tuna, and the first of the blues

    By

    I wrote last week that fishing being what it is, we could have a 180-degree turnaround from the slow showing of bass. Well, we did. Striped bass made a big rebound in the last week, with fish showing up in many places, notably the Race Station to Peaked Hill and in the bay at the Beach Point cottages all the way to the Pamet. Drifting baits were effective, but so was casting diamond jigs and trolling umbrella rigs.

    Unfortunately, the mackerel have left the bay for now and are up on Stellwagen Bank. I had to go up to Stellwagen the other day to catch mackerel for my upcoming trip, and I was rather disappointed in the lifelessness on the bank that day. No whales or seabirds anywhere to be found, and no boats fishing, either. There were a lot of mackerel and herring on the bank, but that was pretty much it.

    Atlantic white-sided dolphins romp through Provincetown Harbor. (Photo by Mike Rathgeber)

    Bluefish have filtered into the area right on schedule, with fish being caught not only in the Race and down back along the ocean beaches but also in the bay off the Pamet.

    There was an unusual whale sighting off Nantucket last week — something I think has never been seen before. A NOAA observation airplane spotted an enormous pod of around 160 whales, though scientists cautioned that it’s possible some whales were counted more than once. What made this sighting different was the fact that they spotted seven different types of whales all together in one place: according to NOAA’s social media post, the count was 93 sei whales, 36 humpbacks, 21 fin whales, and also minke, sperm, and right whales, plus two orcas. This was one of the highest concentrations of sei whales ever seen during a single survey flight.

    What makes this perplexing is that these whales have different diets, ranging from plankton to small schooling fish and including bluefin tuna and giant squid. One of the orcas had a tuna in its mouth. What all these whales were doing in one location is anyone’s guess, but if the right whales in the group somehow find a way into our waters, don’t forget the 10-mile-per-hour baywide speed limit could be reinstated, and the high-speed ferries would be shut down until the whales leave the area. Let’s hope those right whales take another route to the Bay of Fundy.

    Fishing for schoolie-size bluefin tuna was white hot off Chatham in the area of the Regal Sword wreck this past week. The Regal Sword was a 575-foot freighter that sank with a cargo of scrap metal after a collision with a tanker 45 years ago, on June 18, 1979. It’s about 25 miles southeast of Chatham. It sure would be nice if those tuna found their way to our area the way they did last June.

    Whale watching has been challenging lately, but the whales will be back. It’s hard to predict when, though. It’s a big ocean, and whales do what whales do without checking with us first. We did have a fantastic visit by a rather rambunctious pod of Atlantic white-sided dolphins last week. They were flying around at breakneck speed and covered pretty much the entire harbor, including swimming through the West End mooring field.

    Commercial fishing for striped bass opened on June 18. Fishermen are allowed to fish only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays this season. A 35-inch minimum is still in play, along with a 15-fish-per-day bag limit. That will keep market prices north of $20 per pound for sure.

    WHALE WATCH

    Ship Speed Limit Sparks Local Economy Worries

    Aimed at protecting right whales, changes could hit ferries and tourism

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — This year has proved especially lethal for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, with the discovery on March 30 of a dead female marking the fifth mortality or serious injury this year in a population of only around 360 individuals. The biggest immediate threats to the right whales’ survival are entanglement in fishing gear and ship collisions, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

    In September 2022, NOAA Fisheries proposed changes to its North Atlantic Right Whale Vessel Strike Reduction Rule aimed at preventing ship strikes by lowering vessel speeds. The amended rule is in the final stage of executive review, and officials are worried it will have dire effects on the local economy — both on the ferry services that bring visitors to Provincetown every summer and, more broadly, on the business those visitors bring to the town.

    Currently, all vessels over 65 feet long must obey a 10-knot-per-hour speed limit within specific zones at specific times of year — around here, those are Jan. 1 to May 15 in Cape Cod Bay and March 1 to April 15 off Race Point. Current regulations also create “dynamic management areas,” 400-square-nautical mile areas that are established for two weeks when right whales are sighted outside these zones; in these areas, NOAA suggests ‑ but does not mandate ‑ that boats stay below 10 knots per hour.

    The proposed amendments to the rule would impose a 10-knot-per-hour speed limit along the East Coast from Massachusetts to North Carolina between Nov. 1 and May 30, which would apply to all boats at least 35 feet in length. Additionally, the dynamic management areas would become mandatory.

    The amended rule was moved to the executive branch’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs on March 5. If it is passed there, it will become law.

    Michael Glasfeld, owner of Bay State Cruise Company, which runs round-trip ferries between Boston and Provincetown three times a day in the summer, said that extending the speed limit period from May 15 to May 30 would cause his business to lose about half its annual profits. Expenses like insurance and mortgages have to be paid throughout the year, he said, and “every week we operate is critical for paying down all that money.”

    Bay State Cruise Company’s Provincetown ferry. (Photo by Paul Benson)

    During the initial public comment period on this legislation in 2022, Provincetown Town Manager Alex Morse wrote a letter focusing his concern on extending the speed limit to May 30. Morse said that each ferry-based day tripper spends $450 in town, and a visitor who stays for a week spends $6,500.

    U.S. Rep. Bill Keating also wrote a letter that year expressing his concern about the broader effects of the rule change, arguing that Provincetown could lose as much as $100 million in revenue if the three ferry companies that serve the town were to go out of business.

    Glasfeld argues that right whales mostly leave Cape Cod Bay by May 15, so the extension of the restricted period is unnecessary.

    Charles “Stormy” Mayo, the Director of the Right Whale Ecology Program at the Center for Coastal Studies, agreed that most right whales leave the bay by the middle of May. He added, however, that his organization’s data suggest that the whales are departing later and later each year.

    “We have to take really drastic measures in order to save the species from extinction,” said Erica Fuller, senior counsel at the Conservation Law Foundation, which filed suit against NOAA in February to expedite the passage of the vessel speed rule. She said that the only proven way to mitigate right whale death is a 10-knot-per-hour limit.

    Regina Asmutis-Silva, executive director of the nonprofit Whale and Dolphin Conservation, which also took part in the lawsuit, argued that the update is needed because right whales have changed where they live and forage since the original rule was passed in 2008.

    The mandatory dynamic management amendment is what most concerns Glasfeld, he said. If the presence of right whales were to trigger one of these areas in Cape Cod Bay during the summer, he said, it could turn a 90-minute one-way trip into a 4.5-hour one. This, he said, would amount to “millions of dollars lost,” which he said would put the ferry services out of business.

    Two conditions must be met for a slow zone to be triggered. First, a pod of at least three right whales must be detected visually, or a right whale must be detected acoustically. Then NOAA must determine that the whales appear to be staying in the area for at least 10 days, not just transiting through.

    Because of these conditions, the odds of a slow zone being triggered are low, Mayo said. He noted, though, that in 1986 a pod of 13 right whales stayed in Cape Cod Bay throughout the summer.

    Further amendments could still be made to the rule before it is adopted. Fuller suggested that the extension of the speed limit from May 15 to May 30 could be removed, and that her organization would support that.

    Glasfeld also said that he would support the dynamic management areas if they were shrunk to a “navigable” 100 square nautical miles, but both Fuller and Asmutis-Silva said that the dynamic management areas are supported by the best available science.

    When it comes to preventing right whale deaths, Mayo said, “there’s no magic bullet.” Nonetheless, he said, speaking from his perspective, he hopes that NOAA makes a decision “with an understanding that the animals are nearly extinct, and we’ve got to do something or they will be gone.”

    MARINE LIFE

    Speeding Boats Are Still Threatening Right Whales

    Enforcement lags in waters that were once ‘open cowboy plains’

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — When right whales visit the seas around Cape Cod in the winter and early spring, large boats in the whales’ favored areas are barred from going faster than 10 knots. A new report from the environmental nonprofit Oceana, however, found that around half the vessels over 65 feet long broke this speed limit during their passage through Cape waters.

    A pod of right whales socializing near Charleston, S.C. The third whale from the left has extensive scars on its head and back, likely from a ship strike. (Photo courtesy NOAA)

    And that’s better than the findings from the rest of the East Coast.

    “Vessels are speeding at an incredibly alarming rate, all the way up and down the East Coast,” said Julia Singer, a marine scientist with Oceana and a co-author of the report. This trend, she said, presents a “very, very high danger” to right whale populations.

    Yet enforcement of the speed limit is low. In the 2022-2023 season, NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement has levied $900,000 in fines against 53 speeding vessel operators based on data from the automatic information system — far fewer than the 7,300 vessels that Oceana has recorded speeding.

    Real and Voluntary Rules

    The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) designates zones in the Atlantic Ocean, called seasonal management areas (SMAs), where vessels over 65 feet long are not allowed to exceed 10 knots. These areas are established in parts of the ocean that right whales use, and the restrictions are in effect only during the part of the year when right whales are typically present.

    Cape Cod has two seasonal management areas: Cape Cod Bay, which is active from Jan. 1 to May 15, and Off Race Point on the ocean side, which is active from March 1 to April 30. At the state level, the Div. of Marine Fisheries also maintains a speed limit in Cape Cod Bay for all vessels from March 1 to April 30, though data on those boats were not included in the Oceana report.

    To understand whether ships obeyed the rules, Oceana surveyed the speed of large boats using data from the automatic identification system, a network of shipboard transponders that shares boats’ locations, course, and speed. Oceana used these data to determine whether boats were speeding within SMAs across the entire East Coast from November 2020 through July 2022.

    Coast-wide, the study found, 84 percent of vessels violated the 10-knot speed limit within at least one SMA.

    Clearly, widespread speeding elsewhere is dangerous for whales. And right whales’ migratory lives mean that many individuals that visit Cape Cod will spend time in these other more dangerous SMAs. “The whales that are here work well beyond Massachusetts waters,” said Charles “Stormy” Mayo III, the right whale research program director for the Center for Coastal Studies.

    But while Cape Cod’s compliance rates are among the best in the area that was studied, speed violations here were not rare: over 54 percent of the large vessels in Cape Cod Bay and over 38 percent off Race Point violated the 10-knot restriction at least once.

    Oceana also noted multiple vessels traveling at more than triple the 10-knot speed limit through Cape Cod’s two SMAs. One ship in Cape Cod Bay was found to have hit a speed of 38.4 knots, and another ship off Race Point was identified traveling at 34.3 knots. Widespread speeding represents a disregard for the law, Singer said. If these noncompliance rates were true for any other laws, she said, “that would be insane.”

    There is another set of speed rules meant to protect whales: NOAA has established so-called dynamic management areas and slow zones. In them, temporary speed rules go into effect when a right whale is spotted visually or acoustically. These 15-mile-long rectangular areas are established for 15 days at a time, unless a whale stays in the area for a longer period.

    Slowing down in these zones is voluntary, however. So, captains are encouraged by NOAA to limit their speed to avoid harm to right whales, but boats are permitted to exceed 10 knots in them without facing any penalty.

    Oceana found that nearly 65 percent of large vessels in these dynamic zones in the Gulf of Maine exceeded the recommended 10-knot limit. Since these zones represent a confirmed sighting of a whale nearby, Singer said, “for boats to transit at high speeds through there is really one of the most dangerous things they can do.”

    Speed Kills

    The danger that speeding vessels pose to right whales is significant: one out of three right whale deaths in the last six years was directly caused by ship strikes, according to NOAA.

    These deaths are part of an ongoing NOAA-declared unusual mortality event in this species, where 121 right whales have been found dead or injured since 2017. These deaths far outpace the birth of new calves in the same time frame and have caused the population to decline significantly.

    One such death happened in April 2016, when a right whale calf was found killed off Chatham with wounds consistent with a vessel strike. It was one of only 14 calves of the species to be born that winter.

    Mayo suspects that there are likely far more deaths caused by vessel strikes than scientists can confirm. “It’s very hard to tell when an animal has been smashed into,” he said. “Often there are no surface wounds.” Therefore, if a dead right whale sinks before it can wash ashore, it can be difficult to tell how it died. Mayo said he once watched an autopsy of a “pristine” right whale that washed up on the beach. It discovered a massive hematoma, indicating the whale had recently been struck by a ship.

    Any vessel collision is potentially dangerous for a right whale. But, Singer notes, reducing the speed of a vessel can reduce the lethality of ship strikes by 80 to 90 percent, according to one model.

    Part of the reason speeding is nonetheless so pervasive, Mayo contends, is that the ocean was not very carefully managed until a few decades ago. He compared the ocean before more recent legislation to “the open cowboy plains, if you will. You could go any damn speed.”

    Despite more recent restrictions, he said, “it takes some time for people to realize that the ocean is not ‘go just anywhere you want and do anything you want.’ ”

    Because of this lingering Wild West culture, both Mayo and Singer believe more enforcement is necessary.

    Part of the reason for the discrepancy between the incidence of speeding and the number of fines imposed is that NOAA considers a vessel to be in violation of the 10-knot speed limit only if its average speed in an SMA exceeds 10 knots, whereas Oceana considers a vessel to be in violation if it ever exceeds the 10-knot limit.

    The industry magazine Workboat reported that those definitions make a big difference. By NOAA’s standards, only 21 percent of vessels were speeding in the New York and New Jersey Harbor SMA, while by Oceana’s standards over 87 percent were.

    Is This ‘Solvable’?

    New data suggest that the right whale population may be stabilizing around 360 individuals, though this level is significantly lower than the population of 470 individuals estimated in 2011.

    NOAA reported in March of this year that the 2022-2023 season marked the first time that 90 percent of vessels in the Cape Cod Bay and Off Race Point SMAs were in compliance with the 10-knot speed limit. When the SMAs were established in 2008, compliance was 50 percent.

    But NOAA’s standards for violation are more relaxed than Oceana’s standards.

    NOAA is currently considering several changes to the SMA system: extend the 10-knot speed limit to vessels that are 35 or more feet long; make dynamic management areas and slow zones mandatory; establish new, larger SMAs that cover most of the Atlantic coast of the U.S.; and extend the period in which the 10-knot limit is enforced from Nov. 1 to May 30.

    These proposals are getting substantial pushback from industry stakeholders, who, according to a June report on WBUR, suggest that improved right whale tracking technology would be a more appropriate solution to the problem.

    This problem, Singer said, is “big, but also something that’s solvable.” A meaningful solution, however, will require fast action, she said. “We need to start making changes now if we want to be able to save this whale.”

    ENVIRONMENT

    Climate, Not Wind Farms, Is Called Threat to Whales

    Scientists say turbine noise pales in comparison to ship strikes, entanglement, and loss of feeding grounds

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The first turbine of the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project, eight miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, was successfully installed on Oct. 18.

    Two North Atlantic right whales photographed by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries aerial survey team in May 2016. (Photo by Tim Cole/NOAA Fisheries, NEFSC)

    Meanwhile, some who are working against this and other offshore wind energy developments claim that the noise created by the turbines will spell doom for right, humpback, and other endangered whales. Those claims, many of which originate from groups with ties to the fossil-fuel industry, according to multiple reports, and further disseminated by right-wing pundits, have some Cape Codders worried about the whales. Scientists say the assertions feeding the fears are not backed up by facts.

    “It does not appear that noise is going to create a major problem,” said Charles “Stormy” Mayo III about the Vineyard Wind generators. Mayo is chair of the dept. of ecology at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown and an expert on North Atlantic right whale feeding. Based on what we know, he said, it would be “a stretch” to link offshore wind development with any damage to whale populations.

    Christopher Clark, a retired senior scientist and graduate professor at Cornell University with expertise in marine acoustic ecology, echoed Mayo’s thoughts by calling concerns about offshore wind “misplaced.”

    “Wind turbine noise is not going to kill a whale,” Clark said. He has been studying the effects of noise on whales since the 1970s and has also been advising the Vineyard Wind project as a senior scientist.

    The belief that offshore wind development harms whales is rooted in fears that the noise from the installation of wind turbines and the sounds of their generators could disrupt whales’ communication and disorient them. Investigating concerns about sound “is not a totally useless exercise,” Mayo said.

    To avoid harming whales, the Vineyard Wind project is undertaking measures to combat noise pollution. During installation, which involves driving the foundation into the sandy ocean bottom, they are using devices known as bubble curtains, according to the project description.

    The apparatus consists of two concentric rings of tubing that release a curtain of air bubbles around the installation site that insulates the rest of the ocean from the noise of the pile driving. The company has agreed to pause turbine installation from January through April, when right whales are most likely to be in the area.

    Once the turbines are up and running, Clark said, the noise level goes down dramatically. He noted that the biggest risk to whales during wind farm operation comes from the boats that will be servicing the turbines. According to Clark, the Vineyard Wind project plans on using aerial and acoustic surveying to monitor whales’ movements and ensure its boats do not interfere with marine mammal populations.

    There is no way to completely eliminate noise from offshore wind development. Mayo said, however, that right whales are already feeding in Cape Cod Bay amidst noise that he said is “extremely intense.” The area is sometimes “overwhelmed by the noise of ships,” Mayo said. Still, more than half of the North Atlantic right whale population chooses to feed in the bay  every year. “I can’t see, out of what we know, a clear indication that these whales cannot cope with noise,” Mayo said.

    Clark, too, said that the loud shipping traffic that travels through Stellwagen Bank makes it an “industrialized, urbanized environment,” akin to Boylston Street in downtown Boston. Nonetheless, it remains a critical feeding area for humpback, fin, and right whales.
    “If we get to a point where we want a silent ocean,” Mayo said, we’re going to have to eliminate noise “that is much greater than the hum produced by the generators.” It’s an admirable goal, he added.

    Shipping is not the only problem. Both scientists pointed out that the tools used to find and drill for underwater oil, including seismic airguns and explosive charges, are much more extreme than the depth sounders used to scout the ocean floor during offshore wind construction. Mayo likened the depth sounders to the “fish finders” that fishermen use to locate schools of fish.

    Both Mayo and Clark said that the environmental standards that offshore wind energy projects are held to are much higher than for many other offshore infrastructure projects. Mayo applauded the baseline surveying work done by the New England Aquarium for the Vineyard Wind project. He said he is concerned, however, about whether the project will maintain the same level of rigor in monitoring whale populations once the turbines are installed.

    Vineyard Wind is not perfect, both Mayo and Clark said. Mayo said that he opposes industrialization of the ocean in principle but views offshore wind as a necessary concession because of the already emerging destructive effects of climate change. Clark said that installing a wind farm is not a trivial endeavor. “But we have to make the choice,” he said. “Are we going to invest in and support the development of renewable energy?”

    The Real Fight

    Much of the popular fear about the supposed danger wind energy poses for whales has been fueled by misinformation about a die-off of humpback whales in the mid-Atlantic last winter, according to multiple news reports and fact-checking organizations. Mayo, too, has followed the die-off. Mass mortalities, Mayo said, have “been going on for a long time,” and this one shows no apparent signs of being related to wind energy development.

    The facts are these, according to NOAA: While necropsies are still ongoing, at least 40 percent of studied whale deaths off the East Coast of the U.S. since 2016 were tied to ship collisions or entanglement with fishing gear. None could be linked to wind development.

    Prominent right-wing media figures, meanwhile, have used false conclusions about the die-off to discredit wind energy development in general. Former President Donald Trump said at a South Carolina rally that wind turbines are driving whales “a little batty” and “causing whales to die in numbers never seen before.” Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, too, decried offshore wind development in a segment titled “The Biden Whale Extinction.”

    Clark calls for a focus on what we know. “We know that ships kill right whales,” he said. “We know that right whales are getting tangled. These are human activities that actually kill whales.”

    The data back him up. According to NOAA, 85 percent of North Atlantic right whales have been entangled at some point in their lives. Since 2017, at least one-third of all recorded North Atlantic right whale deaths were caused by vehicle strikes, and a quarter were the result of entanglement. And on the West Coast, a 2017 study estimated that ship collisions are killing 18 blue, 22 humpback, and 43 fin whales every year — significant proportions of the populations of these endangered species.

    “We’re too myopic in our whole perspective on this problem,” Clark said. Whales migrate thousands of miles each year, and before industrialization, whale songs could be heard across oceans. For whales, he said, the whole ocean is their home, and focusing on one area offers a “microscopic” perspective on a bigger story.

    Clark called the decline of right whale populations “a symptom” of the destruction of the ocean ecosystem owing to multiple large-scale trends such as overfishing, pollution, overindustrialization, and climate change. The influence of the Vineyard Wind project, Clark said, is a “little dot” in comparison to other problems whales face, especially when it comes to climate change, which renewable energy sources can help mitigate.

    Mayo also named climate change as the greatest existential threat to the whales. He said it is likely causing several right whale feeding grounds to collapse. The Great South Channel off Nantucket and the Outer Banks off Nova Scotia used to host significant whale concentrations, but the food supply has moved elsewhere, forcing whales to follow. Mayo believes that, based on current trends, the Cape Cod Bay right whale grounds may one day collapse, too.

    The only way to save the ocean’s ecosystem as we know it, Mayo believes, involves shifting away from our dependence on fossil fuels quickly. Offshore wind, he said, will have to be a part of that.

    “If we don’t figure something out,” Mayo said, “we’ve got a climate change issue that is going to wreak havoc on right whale populations.”

    ENTANGLEMENT

    Monofilament’s Grip Threatens Humpback Calf

    CCS and IFAW are ‘regrouping’ after sedation efforts fail

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Cape Codders have become acutely aware that whales in the Gulf of Maine face perilous struggles with ocean debris, especially discarded rope that obstructs their paths and entangles their bodies.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    North Winds and Pogies Come and Go

    Changeable weather may be part of global warming’s domino effect

    By

    The inconsistent weather has continued to affect fishing at the tip of the Cape, making it very difficult to get a handle on where the fish are and what they’re doing from one day to the next. We’ve had an unusual amount of north wind, which isn’t our friend when it comes to fishing. And even when the wind has come from the south, that shift has been only for a day and then it’s right back to the north again. We seem to be in an early fall pattern already.

    Evie Holden of South Hadley with a 25-pound striped bass she caught on Monday on the CeeJay. She was fishing with her dad, Rick Holden, who landed a 12-pound bluefish. (Photo by Mike Rathgeber)

    Water temperatures have settled into a mid-60s range practically everywhere. The cooler water has the striped bass more actively feeding, and there have been some nice catches down the back side, especially in and around the Peaked Hill Bar. But striped bass being striped bass, you can also be sitting right on top of them and they won’t bite for love or money. Mackerel baits seem to be working well, and they are finally hitting swimming plugs like Bombers and SP Minnows, which have been strangely ignored most of the season.

    Mackerel have finally dispersed off Stellwagen Bank and are being caught in the rips at Race Point as well as in the deep water off the bathhouse at Herring Cove. Pogies came into our harbor, as they usually do in late summer, as thick as I have ever seen them. But only for one day. Then they disappeared and haven’t been seen again.

    Bluefish are moving around quite a bit. The bluefish in the bay seem to be going north to south from the Pamet River all the way to the Brewster flats; on the ocean side, they are moving up and down from Head of the Meadow all the way up to Race Point. Food movements and water temperatures are probably the motivations here, but the fish are driving the charter boats crazy with their here-for-this-tide-and-gone-for-the-next antics.

    The whales also have been affected by the shifting winds and currents and for the moment have vacated the area around the Race, where they had been providing outstanding whale watching for boaters and beachgoers for weeks.

    One thing I have noticed that is very different from other years is the amazing clarity of our harbor water this summer. Clarity of sea water means the water is clean, but it also can mean that it is relatively lifeless. As our sea water warms each summer, certain algae and plankton typically percolate along. This can at times cut down on the water’s clarity, but at the same time it provides needed nutrients for sea life.

    While it’s very pretty to see the water looking crystal clear in the summer, that sight also worries me and makes me want to know the reasons behind it. Perhaps that is why the pogies, which eat plankton, came in for one day and then left. Our waters, though cooled down this week, have been warming, generally, along with the rest of the planet. Is the harbor becoming too warm for these plankton? And what of the animals that come here to consume it? Everything in the ocean is connected, and warming will have a domino effect.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Beware the Green Bubble Clouds

    Boats should stay at least 100 feet from feeding whales

    By

    It seems like once a summer we have a whale incident that brings out all kinds of crazy myths on social media. It can make your head spin. Last year it was the humpback whale inadvertently mouthing Mike Packard and spitting him out essentially unharmed.

    It seems to take a while for the wrongheaded ideas about whales attacking humans to eventually be squelched by people who know the truth and can set the record straight. But people don’t seem to mind. As the saying goes, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

    A pair of fin whales at Race Point swim by the CeeJay. Up to a dozen fin whales have been at Race Point this week. (Photo by Mike Rathgeber)

    This year it was a nasty collision between a humpback whale and a boat off Plymouth. Immediately, social media platforms, fed by news media outlets that thrive on sensationalism, began talking about whales being angry with boaters and attacking the boat. Here we go again.

    I would like to attempt to inject some facts into the Plymouth incident so people who aren’t in the know can get a better understanding of whale-boater dynamics.

    Those humpback whales off Plymouth were feeding. When humpbacks feed, they blow massive bubbles that make the fish they are preparing to consume panic, and the entire school of fish forms a tight ball. The whale then lunges through the bubble cloud, which theoretically has a tight ball of fish in it, and, if it all works out, the whale gets a big mouthful of food. It’s a brilliant plan that works out well for the whale.

    Boaters watching feeding whales should give them plenty of space — at least 100 feet — and should never run their boat over a green bubble cloud on the surface of the water. Every day we see small private boats crowding the whales when they’re feeding and running over bubble clouds. Commercial whale watch captains know the guidelines and follow them scrupulously.

    The thing is, when a 40-ton humpback whale decides to lunge through a bubble cloud while feeding, it cannot suddenly change its mind and stop or change direction. And that, my friends, is how a feeding whale ends up colliding with a boat that has gotten much too close to begin with.

    No, the incident off Plymouth wasn’t a case of a whale gone mad and attacking the boat, even though that’s what I read about all week on social media. It simply was an accident caused by reckless boating around feeding whales.

    Speaking of whales, we have a tremendous number of fin whales around Race Point at the moment. One day I counted 12 different whales. They can easily be seen from Herring Cove Beach and Race Point Beach as well as from the local whale watch boats.

    Fishing this past week for striped bass and bluefish has been up and down, as our north winds have cooled the water considerably. Race Point waters, which were in the mid-70s, were down to 66 degrees last Sunday. As a result, the fish are all moving around, not feeding much, and not settled into any particular area right now. Stay tuned.

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT—BREAKING NEWS

    The Ultimate Whale Tale

    Lobster diver Mike Packard is spit from a humpback’s mouth

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — First of all, Mike Packard was not “gulped down” by a humpback whale, as the Boston Herald reported, nor was he “swallowed” by the whale, as the Cape Cod Times reported. A whale’s gullet is approximately the size of a softball, so there is no way it could ever swallow a man.

    Mike Packard gives a thumb's up at Cape Cod Hospital.
    Lobster diver Mike Packard after escaping the humpback’s mouth with only minor injuries. (Photo courtesy Leslie Packard)

    Mike, 56, is the local fisherman who is now famous for spending about 30 seconds in a whale’s mouth on Friday morning, June 11.

    He has been diving for lobsters for decades, and he does it better than most. As he does on many days, he was diving off Herring Cove. He flipped backwards into the water from his boat, the J a’n J, and proceeded to descend. The water isn’t very deep where he likes to dive, along the edge between Race Point and Wood End. It is 20 to 50 feet there. This has always been a great area for lobsters.

    Mike’s mate, Josiah Mayo, watched him dive to about 30 feet when he noticed some turbulence in the water. He saw a big dark shadow and thought Mike might be in trouble with a great white shark. Then the shadow broke the surface and Josiah immediately saw it was a young humpback whale. The whale, for reasons we will never know, had taken Mike into its large mouth and up to the surface, where it spit him out. Josiah got Mike into the boat, radioed the rescue squad, and sped back to MacMillan Pier, where Mike was taken to Cape Cod Hospital.

    Before we get all crazy with theories of whales gone bad, keep in mind that they eat small sand eels, herring, mackerel, and pogies. They are not looking for anything as large as a human being. In order to catch their preferred foods, whales have to lunge very fast and hard into a school of fish to get the most bang for the buck. And once a 10-to-30-ton animal decides to lunge, there is no stopping it. This whale could have been feeding when Mike accidentally got in the way.

    Or, being young, this humpback could have been doing what young animals do, including some goofy, irrational behavior. We had a fin whale accidentally hit Vaughn Cabral’s boat last year and semi-swamp him.

    These whales are not aggressive, no matter what you might have read in Moby-Dick. I have run well over 1,000 whale watch trips out of Provincetown and have never seen dangerously aggressive behavior from a humpback or finback whale around boats. They are here to feed and fatten up before they migrate south.

    Whales have no issue with humans, but mistakes do happen, and this was clearly one of them, which luckily did not cost a good man his life. Humpback whales have no teeth, so besides not being swallowed, Mike was not chewed. He was treated at the hospital for minor injuries and released the same day. And he will be able to tell a story for the rest of his life that will never be topped.

     

    THE SCUTTLEBUTT

    Oblivious Whale Nearly Takes Out My Friend

    Vaughn Cabral’s close encounter with a cetacean

    By

    In last week’s column, I wrote that I thought I had seen it all, only to watch a man with a scuba mask dive off his paddleboard to swim with the seals. That might have been the most bizarre moment ever on the water, I thought. But it was topped this past week in a truly “hold my beer” moment.

     

    I was running the Cee-Jay and bass fishing off of Herring Cove. A few hundred yards further out in the deeper water, my boss and good friend, Vaughn Cabral, was in his little center console boat, as usual, fishing for mackerel, which we would use for bait on our next trip. I was sitting up on the bridge, just staring out on the water in the direction of Vaughn’s boat, when, suddenly, there was a massive eruption — and his boat was lifted into the air, landing on its side.

     

    Vaughn Cabral got up close and personal with a fin whale this week, just like his famous encounter in this photo, taken three years ago, with a white shark. (Photo Mike Rathgeber)

    There were fin whales in the area, feeding on mackerel. When they feed, they lunge in a short burst of high speed to catch the mackerel. Apparently, the whale did not know a boat was drifting on the surface above when it made its lunge. We see this particular whale all the time and recognize it because it has a huge scar on its back from a previous ship strike. This whale clearly has issues with orienting itself to surface objects.

     

    I asked my passengers to hurry up and bring their lines in and we raced over to see if Vaughn was all right. It is amazing the boat did not sink, because once they go sideways and water rushes in, it generally doesn’t stop. But in this case, the boat righted itself.

     

    When I got next to Vaughn, he was soaked from head to toe, a fishing rod lay broken, the fish finder had fallen out of its bracket, and the boat was full of water. We stayed long enough to make sure the boat was keeping water out and left a very shaken man, who doesn’t shake easily, to put his boat back together. This is the same man in the same boat who had a white shark try to bite his transom three years ago.

     

    The heat has finally gotten to the striped bass, and they are not really biting very well. Surface water temperatures have remained balmy, in the upper 70s. Good for swimming, but bad for striped bass fishing.

     

    White-sided dolphins at Race Point. (Photo Mike Rathgeber)

    Bluefish, however, like warm water, and fishing for them has been outstanding. It’s really nice to see these big, bad, toothy critters in abundance again after a few years of their being missing in action. Bluefishing has been hot in a wide swath from Long Point to Race Point and around the backside beaches towards the Ranger Station. They have been on the smallish side — two to four pounds — but in very large schools. Casting swimming plugs and vertical jigging have been the most effective methods of catching them, along with trolling umbrella rigs.

     

    The whales are still around Race Point, as you might have guessed, feeding on mackerel and herring, so keep an eye out for the spouts. We also saw a lot of tuna this past week along the backside beaches and even saw some chasing pogies in the harbor.

     

    The biggest treat were the huge pods of white-sided dolphins we spotted off the Race and in the harbor as well. Just goes to show, you truly never know what you will see when you throw the lines off and head out to sea.

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