New England, Day 3

Photos by Hui-chen and MJ Klein

Part of the 2010 USA Trip Series

Day 3 found us up early and in the beautiful seacoast town of Gloucester, Massachusetts.  The weather was perfect for what we had in mind that day.  We began with a little ride around the town to see what it looked like, this being Hui-chen’s first time here.

It had been years since I was in Gloucester and I had forgotten how nice it is.

This is where we were going – to the 7 Seas Whale Watch.  This article is geotagged at this location.

Our boat,  Privateer IV, awaits us.

This is the Cape Pond Ice company, made famous in the movie, The Perfect Storm, and a famous landmark in Gloucester.

Soon it was time to board the boat and set sail for the whale grounds.

Leaving the harbor, the sea was calm and flat.  Just look at the weather: perfect!

This is a shot of Hammond Castle, but it wasn’t clear which part is castle, due to the tree cover.  I think the castle is to the left behind the trees in this photo.

We cruised for roughly an hour, out to where the whales feed and play.

This is me with my Panasonic GS-500 video camera and the Glidecam 2000.  I wore this contraption so I could take videos and reduce the motion of the boat.  I’ll show you the edited video at the end of this article.

This was our first while siting of the day: A Fin whale.

This is our first whale tail we spotted.  This is of course, a Humpback whale.

The above 3 shots are a tail series.  Hui-chen took over 700 photos and she got some fantastic shots like these.

Below is another series:

And another below:

When humpbacks want to dive deep, they arch their backs and lift their tails out of the water.  This propels them downwards.

Watch this action in the series below:

Biologists identify individual whales by the shape of their tails and the markings on the tail, which are distinctive.

This is a shot of a mother and baby whale that we saw swimming together for a period of time.  I also got them on video.

Another diving series below:

Humpback whales have white on their fins, and it looks green in the water.

All too soon it was time to leave.  We spotted 11 Fin and 13 Humpback whales.  On the way back to port, we suddenly found ourselves in a pod of Atlantic White Sided Dolphins.

The on-board biologist estimated the number of dolphins to be about 150.

The dolphins were criss-crossing along the path of the boat and having a great time playing in the water.

We passed this lighthouse as we were coming back into port.

This factory used to manufacture paints used on the bottom of boats, until it was determined that this type of paint harms the environment.  Now this is an abandoned building.

After lunch in Gloucester, we drove around for a little tour with our friend Scott.  One of the first things that Scott showed us is some places from the movie The Perfect Storm, which was filmed in Gloucester.  This is The Crow’s Nest, which is a bar that was featured in the movie.  But, the real Crow’s Nest isn’t located on the dock like the movie shows.  It’s actually across the street from the dock.

This is the actual dock where the boat was tied up in the movie.

Scott says that this blue building is where they offloaded their catch in the movie.  I’m going to have to go back and watch it again because I don’t remember!

We found this beautiful lighthouse while driving around.

Feel free to click on this photo and view the large size on Flickr.com.  I recommend this photo for a desktop background!

This is part of the lobster boat fleet.  We saw that quite a few boats were up for sale.

This is a lobster trap, or also called a “pot.”

In one of the shacks we saw perhaps the largest lobster claw we’d ever seen, hanging next to a shark’s jaw.

Since this was the July 4th weekend, there was a parade scheduled to take place.  We didn’t want to get caught in the parade so we headed for the highway and left the area.

You can see people lining up for the parade.  If we had waited for the parade, we would have been stuck there for hours.

Finally, we found the road out to the highway and got out of town just in time!

Below is the whale watch video, edited to show just the best parts.

Whale Watch Highlights from MJ Klein on Vimeo.

Now, we leave you with this preview photo of our next installment in this series.  Can you tell where we’re going to go next?

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