Whale Watching Season Has Started with a Bang!

Whale Watching out of Plymouth - May

Great whale watching at the start of our 2013 season. We have been seeing humpback whales, finback whales, minke whales as well as Atlantic white-sided dolphins and harbor porpoise. We want to thank Captain John Boats out of Plymouth for providing internship tickets for each trip. With that support, our  interns would not be able to get offshore with any consistency.

Atlantic white-sided dolphins. 

Atlantic white-sided dolphins.

Bubble net being made by humpback whales. 

Feeding Frenzy!

This season, intern tickets have also been donated by Plymouth Whale Watching out of the State Pier in Plymouth. This will allow more of our interns to get offshore on a regular basis. Thanks to both companies for the generosity on behalf of our program. 

Buzzard kick feeding. 

Fracture and Zeppelin feeding deep together. 

Lunging through the bait. Lots of body parts!

Surface feeding. 

Zeppelin lunging through a bubble net. 

Fern's 2013 calf coming towards the boat. 

Northern gannet

Finback whale spouting.

Finback whale

Finback whale

April 15, 2013 - Right Whale Days

Val and Mary getting set-up for their amazing arts & craft activites. 

NECWA staff members Val and Mary joined the staff at the New Bedford Whaling Museum for their annual Right Whale Days. On this special day, kids and adults celebrate and learn about the North Atlantic right whale by participating in free activities, listening to stories, viewing life-sized inflatable whales, and helping devour a beautifully decorated whale cake!

The Whaling Museum's Bob Rocha getting ready to cut the cake.

Val and Mary hard at work helping the children.

Mary and Val and Therese, Mary's sister, teamed up to provide a number of hands-on activities that included "make your own origami whale" and "decorate your right whale fluke." Also onboard to help was RSVP volunteer Claire and NB Whaling Museum volunteer Ryleigh. The kids really enjoyed making their own whale crafts and learning about right whales in the process.

Kids working on their origami whales. 

Inflatable mother and calf right whale. 

All in all it was a wonderful day for everyone involved. We are so thankful to be part of this very important celebration each year and look forward to next year's Right Whale Day's celebration. We hope you will be able to visit the New Bedford Whaling Museum for the museum is a treasure trove of amazing facts, artifacts and images on whales, whaling and life.

Mary's sister Therese with her origami whale. Nicely done!

On our whale watches with Captain John Boats out of Plymouth Harbor, we are seeing (at a distance of 500 yards) right whales offshore. Many are surface feeding (skim feeding) on small zooplankton called copepods. Right whales have also been sighted just off many Cape Cod beaches bordering Cape Cod Bay. Now is the time to get outside and enjoy the beautiful weather and the amazing sightings!

Therese and Claire  helping out. 

Update on Ocean Sunfish Strandings for 2012

Ocean Sunfish Strandings for 2012.

Hot off the Press!

Google Maps of Ocean Sunfish Strandings for 2012

With a little down time on my hands, I wanted to use Google Earth and plot the location of each of the 39 ocean sunfish that stranded dead this season. As you see, most stranded along the shores of Cape Cod, those that border Cape Cod Bay. But a few individuals stranded along the shores of Buzzards Bay and many of our live animals that we rescued were in this area.

The top map shows all strandings of dead animals for the 2012 season. To date, we were able to locate and examine 39 carcasses. Three additional carcasses were reported to NECWA, but we were not able to get to those carcasses before the tide washed them offshore. This is the highest number of stranded animals of any season to date and almost twice as many as last season. The bottom maps show close-ups of specific areas that turned out to be hot spots for strandings this season.

2012 Ocean Sunfish Strandings, Barnstable and Dennis MA.

Please remember that strandings of ocean sunfish are an annual event. Ocean sunfish migrate to our cold, productive waters to feed on jellyfish and other gelatinous critters. As winter approaches, they start to head south for warmer more tropical waters. Unfortunately, some animals become trapped by the physical presence of Cape Cod or they become trapped in back bay areas and inlets. This big fish can not tolerate cold water and will eventually become cold-stunned, typically washing ashore dead.

2012 Ocean Sunfish Strandings, Brewster and Eastham MA.

2012 Ocean Sunfish Strandings, Wellfleet MA.

We hope our ocean sunfish stranding season has ended, but only time will tell. Thank you again to all who assisted us with both live and dead strandings of ocean sunfish this season and seasons' past. Without your time and effort, we could not do this very important work. Thank you for caring!

A big thank you to the staff and volunteers at Mass Audubon at Wellfleet Bay. Without their efforts, we would not have been able to locate and necropsy many of the carcasses that stranded along the shores of Cape Cod.

Also a big thank you to Dr. John Jahoda and others at Bridgewater State University (BSU). BSU provides material and mental support : ) for this work and our other marine wildlife projects. Most of our ocean sunfish samples are stored at BSU and we are working with Biology student Lauren Tauer on aging studies related to this species. 

The information obtained from these examinations is being shared with researchers in the New England area and around the world. With your help, we now have a better understanding of the biology and ecology of this very unusual, but very deserving, marine fish in our New England waters.  

Go Team Mola!

Best to all and a very Happy New Year! 

Krill Carson

Marine Biologist and President

NECWA

December 20, 2012 Ocean Sunfish Strandings Continue

Jamie with the carcass at Breakwater Beach, Brewster MA

This morning, my son Jamie and I headed down to Cape Cod to locate and necropsy a dead ocean sunfish that had been reported to NECWA the night before. Volunteers with Mass Audubon at Wellfleet Bay who were walking the beaches for stranded sea turtles had come across a dead stranded ocean sunfish that had washed up on Breakwater Beach in Brewster.

Jamie recording the weight of the sunfish.

As we drove south on Route 3, my cell phone started ringing off the hook as additional ocean sunfish carcasses were being reported in Brewster and Eastham. By the end of the day, we were able to determine that a total of 6 dead ocean sunfish had stranded dead on the beaches of Cape Cod. When all was said and done, we were able to locate and examine 5 carcasses and all were females!

Bruce, Jamie, Kelly and Mary collecting body measurements. 

In an effort to get some additional help with what was turning out to be a very busy day, I made a frantic call to Michael Sprague at Mass Audubon. Michael put the word out to their volunteers and found 3 people who were available and interested in helping out. Those volunteers were Kelly, Mary and Bruce. I could not have examined 5 of the 6 carcasses that were reported that day without their help. I can not thank them enough for their time and efforts over the course of the day as we moved from one carcass to the next. Never a complaint and always a "can do" attitude. People like this are gems and their efforts are greatly appreciated. Thank you Mass Audubon for sharing your volunteers and sending us such amazing help!

Damaged clavus of this ocean sunfish carcass. 

Propellor cuts through dorsal fin. 

Our first stop was the carcass that had been reported on Breakwater Beach in Brewster. This turned out to large female ocean sunfish that weighed approximately 725 pounds. This carcass was very fresh for its exposed eye was still present. This animal had been hit by a boat sometime in the past for there were extensive propellor cuts through it dorsal fin and some of the scalloping on its tail fin (clavus) were missing. All wounds were nicely healed. Sad to think that this individual survived a collision of this magnitude, only to become trapped by Cape Cod and die from cold-stunning.

Puffy tissue band close to clavus .

High head crest of this small female ocean sunfish.

Small fish with high head crest.

Bruce and Kelly measuring the carcass. Jamie is looking on. 

The next fish was a very small, but condensed female that stranded between Thumpertown Beach and Campground Beach in Eastham. I have never seen an ocean sunfish with such an extensive head crest and such a puffy tissue band near its clavus. This fish weighed close to 330 lbs. and was so compact that we couldn't collect some of our body measurements for the body parts were too close together. 

Large carcass south of Cook's Brook Beach.

Less than a few hundred feet from this small carcass was a second carcass, but this carcass was immense in size!  Due to the large size of this animal, we didn't even attempt to weigh it using our portable weighing tripod. But we did determine that we had yet another female on our hands and we were able to collect all the necessary information before continuing on to the last two carcasses for the day. 

Mary and Bruce next to the small carcass at Cook's Brook Beach.

Kelly and Bruce working on the carcass at Cook's Brook Beach.

The last two carcasses were located close to Cook's Brook Beach in Eastham. Both carcasses were more decomposed than any seen that day so they must have been floating around for some time before they stranded. The first carcass had stranded right in front of the parking lot was small in size. This individual turned out to be a female.

Jamie with the fifth ocean sunfish carcass. 

The second carcass was a bit south of the parking lot and was much larger in size. But the tide was coming up so we could only collect a few measurements and tissue samples from this animal. In the coming days, we hope to return to this last fish to collect the otoliths and vertebra, but we were able to determine that it was also a female ocean sunfish.

As Jamie and I headed home, we received a call from a good friend, Lisa, from Brewster reporting a 6th stranded dead ocean sunfish. I will include one of Lisa's photos below. Hard to believe that Lisa's fish makes carcass #39 for us this season. This is the highest number of dead ocean sunfish that we have had in any season and we fear that the season is not over yet. We will be heading back down to Cape Cod to try and locate Lisa's fish and hope that no additional carcasses are sighted.

A busy day to be sure, but a productive day that will help us better understand this strange and unusual fish as well as protect those living animals. Thanks again to everyone who helped today, not just the people who assisted on site, but all the people who took the time to call Krill with sighting information. We couldn't do this work without your help.

December 16, 2012 Sea Turtle Rescues

Today my son Jamie and I headed to Wareham to pick up a sea turtle that had been reported as stranded in that area. As we headed south on Route 495, my son asked me if the turtle would be alive. I said I did not know, but we could only hope that it was.

When we arrived on site, we were met by local residence David, Jay, Nat and Suze who directed us to the location of the sea turtle on the beach. We found a medium-sized loggerhead sea turtle at the high tide line, but unfortunately, it did not appear to be alive.

We put the turtle in the truck and thanked everyone for their amazing help. And then off Jamie and I went to Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary to deliver the loggerhead to Bob Prescott and his team.

Jamie with the loggerhead as we arrive at Wellfleet Bay. 

Bob Prescott and his staff which included Molly, Tom and Michael weighed the loggerhead (approx. 40 lbs.) and collected a number of external body measurements. This carcass will now go into the freezer and will be necropsied this spring down at Woods Hole. 

Weighing the sea turtle. 

Tom using calipers to determine the length of the shell.

Tom using calipers to collect body measurements.  

Tom measuring the length of the shell.

Tom measuring the girth of the turtle. 

Tom examining the plastron of the loggerhead. 

It is very sad that this loggerhead died in Buzzards Bay. But hopefully the information that we obtain from this carcass will help us better understand and protect this endangered species in our New England waters. 

As Jamie and I headed home, we received a call from a local resident, Donna, about a stranded sea turtle at Rock Harbor. Since we were still on the Cape and close to exit 11, we turned around and headed back to the Orleans rotary. 

Jamie with the Kemp's ridley sea turtle. 

When we arrived at Rock Harbor, Donna met us on the beach and showed us where the sea turtle was located. This turned out to be a little Kemp's ridley sea turtle, the most endangered of all the sea turtles in our waters. 

After thanking Donna for her time and efforts on the sea turtle's behalf, we had an unsettling feeling that this turtle was also dead. When we arrived back at Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, the team confirmed our suspicion by indicating that this turtle was indeed dead. 

How very sad to lose two sea turtles in one day. We can only hope for a better day, one filled with live sea turtle rescues. On the way home, I had one very tired boy who slept in the car most of the ride home. A big day filled with rescues and sea turtles. Sweet dreams!