We talk a lot about responsible whale watching......and for good reason. In my mind there’s no better alternative to whaling and captivity than being able to point to communities that are thriving, at least in part, due to the public’s desire to watch whales alive and well in their natural habitat. But it also needs to be done in a responsible manner, especially with the popularity of whale watching expanding.
Whale and dolphin watching is now over a two billion dollar industry and takes place in over 120 countries. So with so many options it can be confusing to know if there’s a difference between companies and operators, which is why we partnered with NOAA and developed a program called Whale SENSE, which is an acronym for the key components of the program:

Stick to whale watching guidelines

Educate naturalists,operators and guests to have SENSE when whale watching

Notify appropriate agencies or networks of right whale sightings and animals in danger

Set an example for others on the water

Encourage ocean stewardship
Whale SENSE has been so successful that last year the program expanded to the mid-Atlantic. Our expansion to New Jersey has seen the inclusion of Cape May Whale Watch & Research Center (CMWW&RC) with two locations: one operating out of Cape May and the other out of Wildwood. By signing up to this voluntary program CMWW&RC have agreed to all of the above components of whale SENSE as well as going through a yearly training and evaluations program.

As one of our staff, Monica Pepe, is from New Jersey it seemed only right that we send her down for the trainings and evaluations that began in 2011. Because there are two vessels leaving from two different locations, this year Monica brought me along to help and I’m so glad she did. It was fun to see The Shore with a local, except now I know that it’s called going “down the shore.” Monica was the perfect tour guide showing me the shops downtown, pointing out just how close the dolphins would come to the shoreline, and the general wonderfulness of Wawa. She also introduced me to the fabulous team at CMWW&RC.

We are very impressed with the entire operation. Everyone at CMWW&RC was so great about wanting to do the right thing for the animals and their passengers. The naturalists were really top notch and excited about incorporating data collection into their job and the operators are so incredibly experienced that they not only can recognize individuals but they also have a sense for the dolphins seasonal movements.
And everyone is excited to take PhotoID to the next level and develop a catalog based on the dolphin’s natural markings - which we are also excited to partner with them on.

They have given nicknames to some of the individual bottlenose dolphins they see regularly. So having a catalog will allow them to better share their “regulars”, and ideally make it easier to keep track of sightings history for individual animals as well. While most of them are identified by nicks or scars on their dorsal fins, some of the really distinct ones we saw during our time there have soft-bodied barnacles, which detach after a little while. This type of barnacle aggregates to form comb-like patterns and will prove to be a challenge for our photo ID work since they might change the appearance of dorsal fins.
Last year, when we began working with CMWW&RC we provided them with a humpback catalog because they do occasionally see larger whales on their trips. In fact, when Monica was with them doing their original trainings they had three humpbacks. The only problem is when humpbacks are in shallow waters they don’t fluke up as often.

But Monica taught them well and over the fall they were able to photograph three other humpbacks, one of which we matched to our Gulf of Maine Humpback Whale Catalog - a whale named Esca. Esca is a younger whale, first seen in 2009 and not yet well documented. Having these individual sightings will help us to determine if the whales being seen off of New Jersey are from the same feeding stock or different ones.

CMWW&RC will also be collecting data and photographing marine debris. In the Southern Gulf of Maine we have mapped the location of whale sightings and marine debris, showing how frequently the two overlap. We are using this to educate the public about the importance of recycling and making sure that trash finds its way into proper receptacles.

For the past few weeks we have been seeing mostly finbacks on the whale watching boats. Finbacks are harder to identify as individuals then some of the other whale species because their identifying marks are subtle and spread out over the whale's body. So unlike humpbacks, who you only need a photo of the underside of the tail fluke to identify it, with finbacks you often need at least photos from two different regions of the body: the dorsal fin and the cheveron (the area behind the blowhole).

However, more often then not, you need entire sweeps of both sides of a finback to be able to have enough identifying markings to be 100% sure about your ID….So as you can imagine identifying finbacks as individuals is time consuming and difficult.

There are a many unique finbacks that have a unique  dorsal fins - they may have a notch missing or a cut in the dorsal fin that aid in speeding up the identification process.

However, the great majority of finbacks have dorsal fins that are nondescript and look alike. But there are a few finbacks that you can identify almost immediately upon seeing them – like Loon and Braid, who are easy to identify because unfortunately they have both been hit by boats. Braid you can see has been stuck not once, but twice. These are propeller tracks.

Loon was also hit by a boat, just not the propellers.

We know that Loon was hit in 2005 because whale watching boats were watching Loon when a fast ferry ran right through the area and over Loon. Here’s a photo taken in 2005, shortly after the vessel strike.

Whales face a number of threats: whaling, being struck by boats - both large and small, entanglement in fishing gear, pollution - noise, chemical, and plastics, and climate change. It's tempting, but wrong to think about all these threats as single issues. We need to manage for the cumulative impact to whales and their environment posed by our activities.

April 8^th to 10^th  we co-hosted our 4^th annual naturalist workshop with the Dolphin Fleet and the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. The workshop began in 2008, as a two day workshop attended by a small group of whale watch naturalist. Since then it has grown in size and scope. Since 2009 the workshop has been a three day event, ending with a whale watch donated by the Dolphin Fleet.

I believe the number of whale naturalists, scientists and policy specialist participating, in what has now became an annual right of spring, has increased annually because of how diverse and on point the speakers continue to be. Much thought is put into speakers, ensuring diversity within each year’s line up for sure, but also between years. No one wants to listen to the same talk on the same subject year after year.

So beside diversity in whale talks and speakers every year there is also many talks other topics related to ocean health and whale conservation. So for example, in 2008 additional talks were given on coastal weather information and forecasts, bluefin tuna off the coast of Massachusetts, and birds in a changing climate. In 2009, a few of the things we learned about had to do with physical oceans - surface slicks, internal waves and upper ocean stability, also ocean noise and seals. In 2010, the agenda was rounded out with talks about sharks, cetacean captivity, and marine debris. And this year, we had talks on fisheries, subsistence whaling; and the Massachusetts Ocean Management Plan.

Here's a small sampling of this some of this years speakers.

As with all conference, there is also a lot of networking and building of plans to better work together – which in turn means we all do a better job of protecting our shared resource. The weekend culminates with participants and speakers whale watching together and some amount of ‘passing the microphone around’ so that we can share our different styles of naturalizing.

The whale watch is generally a highlight because spring is always a great time to go whale watching, but this year’s whale watch was extra special. It was special because we had sei whales lunge feeding which was a first for all of us, but the best part was that we got to experience it together.

Over the past few days we've had many more humpbacks come into our whale watching area - and it has been great. We have them in large groups and Monday morning they were even feeding at the surface.

Yesterday the groups seemed to get even larger in number and was composed of old friends that we haven't seen yet this year - like Fragment. Here's some video of our trip yesterday - really an amazing day with at least 10 humpbacks coming right to the boat.

hanging with humpbacks from WDCS on Vimeo.

Yet the high of hanging out with all these humpbacks came to a crashing end this morning when turn on my computer to check out WDCS's latest news. This morning I was greeted by the news that in Ayukawa, Japan during an annual whaling festival a Baird's beaked whale was killed in front of a group of tourists, and towed to shore by a whaling ship. Meat from the animal was then grilled, and offered free of charge to the on-lookers.

This news was promptly followed by the fact that the leading Icelandic whaling company, Hvalur, has already killed 76 endangered fin whales this season. The high of watching so many whales alive and well in their natural habitat followed by lows of hear of the hunts leaves me feeling many things. First, grateful that I live in a country where instead of hunting, whale watching has been embraced. There were 300 other people on each of those whale watching trips - oohing and ahhing over the whales we saw. Sometimes the greatest joy is to experience whales through the eye's of new whale watchers.

However, I have sadness for citizens of whaling countries and whale watchers traveling to whaling nations because they are robbed of these untainted whale experiences. Even the best whale watching trip in Iceland or Greenland would be clouded by the persistent worry that those same whales will soon be killed.