Notes from Lubec
August 10, 2006

--Bill McWeeny


This is my third visit to the New England Aquarium’s Right Whale Research Station in Lubec, Maine this summer.  My first visit was unexpected.  On July 24th I was vacationing with Amy Knowlton, research scientist at the New England Aquarium, when she received a cell phone call that there was a dead right whale floating close to Grand Manan Island in the Bay of Fundy.  We immediately switched gears and headed to the Lubec Research Station, which had to be opened up since it was before the field season.  We set up camp there with Bill McLellan and Ann Papst, who are from the University of North Carolina and would be performing the necropsy.   We spent the next fort-eight hours doing the thousands of little things necessary to actually get the necropsy of a whale completed.  See the article in the Bangor Daily News; page B1, July 26, 2006 for further details.  For me, my first necropsy, it was interesting, at times exciting but most of all discouraging and very sad.  The less than a year old, female whale, measuring 31 feet long was apparently run over by a boat slashing it thirteen times on the right side causing it to bleed to death.  

My second visit was just a quick one last week to have dinner with the research team and help them set up for a day before the boat trips began.  After I left they managed four day out in the Bay of Fundy and documented a dozen mother/calf pairs in the Bay.  That was great news for the team.  The whales had returned from the calving grounds off of Florida and Georgia to the plankton rich Bay of Fundy.  

I recently came to Lubec three days ago.  After setting myself up I did a few chores around the station including getting my internet connect, going to Campobello Island and mailing a skin sample from the dead whale to the genetics researchers, helping with some cleaning and cooking and most of all talking with the team members about whales.  

Dinners at the research station are special.  This year there is no cook for a lot of the season due to funding cuts.  Each night two members of the team volunteer to cook for about 8-10 or more people.  Tuesday night Monica and Lindsey cooked a seasoned chicken dish with eggplant and green beans, etc.  Of course Mr. Mc substituted some Tofurkey veggie Italian sausages for the chicken.  We all eat around a large table in the oversized kitchen.  Often neighbors come to have dinner.  This night Katherine and Chuck, next door summer neighbors sat in.  The conversations go all over the place but usually manage to focus around whales and conservation of the environment.  You can learn a great deal just sitting in at a dinner at the station.

Bill and Amy cleaned up after the dinner (the cookers never clean) and made an extra large batch of Mr. Mc’s now famous veggie chili for Wednesday night.  Since Wednesday was going to be a boat day, from 6:00AM to 8:00PM on the water, the chili was made a day ahead of time.  Katherine insisted that we call her on our way in Wednesday evening so that she could come over and heat up the chili for us.  Not only did she heat up the chili, she also made a salad and cornbread to go with it!  What a neighbor.    

Wednesday ended up being a very informative day in the Bay of Fundy.  We began the day in normal fashion.  Grace, the Field Season director, woke us all up at 5:00AM after checking the weather.  We had to be ready with all of our personal stuff and the boat gear by 6:00AM at the dock.  Everyone pitched in, doing their personal stuff, eating breakfast and then packing food for lunch and snacks. Then the gear got loaded into the van, computers, cameras, hydrophone equipment, crossbow and darts, poop container and sample jars, etc., etc.  We got on the Nereid but soon discovered the fuel situation was miscalculated and we needed to fuel up.  Low tide in Lubec is something else.  There is about a twenty-foot difference between high and low tide.  Of course it was low tide and we could not get to the fuel dock.  About an hour later, after doing various jobs, we could get fuel.  So we did not depart until after 8:00AM.  So much for an early start.

We usually start surveying at West Quoddy Head but the computer, which logs all the data and our course, did not work until we were well past Grand Manan and into the Bay of Fundy.  Finally, about 9:30AM we began the official survey, three hours late.  But we still had about nine hours of survey time left and 11 hours before we had to be back at Lubec.  It took a while to find the whales.  We first looked where they had concentrated last week but saw none.  About 11:00AM we were heading north and saw the Elsie Minota on the horizon.  We radioed them.  They had two right whales.  Once we started working those two whales, we found whales the rest of the day.  The interesting fact was that we were finding all males this week when it was all moms and calves last week.  And last week the whales were concentrated in one general area.  This day the whales were spread out about a half a mile apart.  So it was hard to actually document the whales because you first had to spot them, then motor to that spot and wait for them to surface.  They might surface pretty far away and so on….  All in all we got up to whale AA, which means taking photos of 27 individual whales.  

One special event was a pair of whales, Thorny and 1170, both males who were swimming together and doing head-lifts together.  This behavior has been seen many times.  Along with it the whales sometimes make a sound called a “gunshot”.  Susan Parks was on the Nereid yesterday.  She is the authority on right whale vocalizations having just completed her PhD on the subject.  She had her hydrophone equipment with her and the team proceeded to record what was going on.  During the recording Phillip yelled, “Thorny is jell-oing!” What is jell-oing?  I found out that during this play behavior, supposedly when the whale makes the gunshot noise it shakes all over, the blubber that is, like a bowl full of jell-o!  Wow.   The video and recordings did not turn out too well but the attempt was good and next time there are plans for doing it better.  We could hear a slight gunshot sound a couple of times on the recording.

During the day, when I was on watch or driving or just trying to relax during a break, I thought a lot about the Calvin story.  I talked to Phillip about human and whale special relationships.  How do humans know where they are out in the middle of the ocean and how do whales know?  Humans use their senses differently on the water, sound and feel become more important than sight.  Whales must have some special sensing abilities.  I want the Calvin story to include information like this so the reader can identify with the whales.  Whales and humans are very similar and we should look for ways to highlight this fact.  That way humans will be more likely to pay attention to the crisis the whales are in.  I’m always thinking and jotting down notes about the story.  It is not easy writing in my journal on the Nereid but I do it.

I have explained much of the day’s work on the Neried in past notes from Lubec so I will not go into detail here.  Suffice to say that by 6:30PM we were very tired from all the chasing and photographing.  We arrived back at the Lubec dock around 8:00PM, unloaded the boat, and carried all the gear up to the station.  Before we ate the data had to be recorded and backed up with a hard drive.  That took the team about 45 minutes.  At 9:00PM we sat down to a well-deserved and very tasty dinner.  We all were in bed by 10:30 PM.  Thank goodness the weather was windy and foggy today so we all actually slept in.

Today I finalized my letter to NMFS about the proposed rule.  I have attached it to this e-mail for you to read.  Let me know what you think.  REMEMBER, WE HAVE TO SEND OUR COMMENTS IN BY AUGUST 25TH TO THIS E-MAIL ADDRESS: Shipstrike.Comments@noaa.gov or to the snail-mail address I have at the top of my attached letter.  All of you wrote some wonderful comments.  Amy and I have been telling the team about our letter-writing meeting and how great it is to have your generation in on this!  Don’t forget to send me an electronic copy of your final letter for my journal and our Calvin records.

My best to you all.  Maybe I will see you at the Nature Shack barn raising on August 19th!

Keep thinking CALVIN,

Mr. Mc