Angelique is on a Whale & Seabird cruise, currently in Burnt Cove off of Swans Island. We’re sailing around Long Island today, and we hope the weather will be good tomorrow for sailing out 20 miles off-shore to to see if we can find some whales!
We’re hoping to see Minke, Humpback and Finback whales. They are such amazing mammals! The smallest of the three, and most abundant whale, is the Minke. Minke whales have a characteristic white band on each flipper, contrasting with its very dark gray top color. Minke whales are about 25 - 30 feet long and weigh about 6 - 8 tons.
Humpback whales are the next biggest of the three, about 52 feet long and weighing about 30 to 50 tons. That’s a lot of whale! They are the acrobats of the ocean, and they sing amazing songs. They breach high out of the ocean and sometimes twirl as they come back down. Male humpback whales are the most imaginative, noisiest of whales; they have long, varied, complex, eerie, and beautiful songs.
Finback whales are very large, about 78 feet long and weighing around 50 to 70 tons. To put it in perspective, they eat about 2 tons of food per day. But its great size doesn’t slow it down: the Finback whale is called “the greyhound of the sea”, capable of bursts of speed of up to 23 mph!
Besides the whales, we hope to see white-sided dolphins, huge grey seals - twice the size of harbor seals - and gannets, puffins and shearwaters. Cross your fingers! We’ll let you know what we found right here on the Angelique blog!
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