Whale of a time

One of us  breakfasted this morning on sweet potato pancakes with Maple syrup, strawberries and sausages,  followed by muesli .. , followed by toast. The first thing that greeted us on our adventure was a statue called "the Tourists"   Is this how others really see us?

'Tourists' by Choam Gross

Cape Cod juts out into the Atlantic like an arm flexing its biceps, and Chatham, where we are staying is at the elbow. Today we travelled up the forearm to Provincetown on the tip of the hand. It was the pilgrims' first stop in the New World before they moved on to Plymouth, but today it's a fairly seedy tourist spot and a favourite with the gay community. Our purpose in going  there was to take a three hour whale watching tour which starts from the harbour. Apparently, Provincetown is the best place for whale watching since being at the tip of a long spit, it's already forty miles out to sea. Here you can see the lighthouse with the sea on either side of the land.

On board our boat we had a lady naturalist who told us all about the whales residing in  the local waters in order to regain body fat after their long migration from the Caribbean, where they calf. 

The humpback whales don't have teeth, they have baleens which are sieving mechanisms designed to filter plankton from the water resulting in approximately 100lbs of plankton with each mouthful.

Our naturalist shows us a baleen

And then along came the whales........
At first we spotted them spouting and before long they were swimming closer and closer to the boat. A lot of them are known by name to the marine biologists and one in particular, Samara, was a bit of a scene-stealer, noseying alongside and under our boat with another whale for company.

Blowhole of the whale clearly visible

Underside of the tail fluke

Upper side of the tail fluke

Barnacles visible on the tail

A mother and calf

These are just five photos out of more than a hundred shots we got of the humpbacks. There was a sighting of a Minke whale too but unfortunately, it evaded capture on film.

The weather has been miserable all day today. We had to abandon a walk round Chatham this evening to view some interesting specimen trees because of heavy rain and poor light. Hope tomorrow will see the return of the sun.