Out to sea

"Pics or it didn't happen." Yeah, yeah. But I know we saw a minke whale. A female, according to the captain, and I make a point of listening to the experts. "Despite its relatively large size, the minke whale is very fast," notes one source, "and their surfacing can be sporadic and hard to follow." We can vouch for that last bit. The uncertainty of knowing where she might rise next, combined with our camera's slow trigger speed, may have prevented us from documenting our encounter with Balaenoptera acutorostrata, but the mental snapshots will not soon fade.

We went out with Dolphin Fleet Whale Watch, operating out of Provincetown. From P-town, their boats head out to Long Point, around to Race Point, and then line out to the Stellwagen Bank, an underwater plateau rising north of Cape Cod to within about a hundred feet of the surface. The surrounding waters are considerably deeper, and when ocean currents encounter the steep sides of the Bank, minerals and organic nutrients well up from the bottom, feeding an abundance and diversity of life that would not otherwise concentrate to the same extent. 

Slightly more cooperative than the minkes were grey seals. Once nearly extirpated from Massachusetts waters, the seals have made a dramatic comeback over the last several decades. The Cape Cod population is estimated at thirty to fifty thousand.

The resurgence in seal numbers, along with increased protection for sharks, has in turn led to an increase in the number of white sharks around Cape Cod. The Outer Cape in particular has become a hot spot for white shark research and, increasingly, white shark tourism as well. (See "The White Sharks of Cape Cod" for a more detailed accounting.) Beaches are marked accordingly. 

We intend to return to Cape Cod, and will certainly go on another whale-watching outing when we do—perhaps, if we can afford it, a shark-watching expedition as well. For now, though, that's all for this trip.