Whale of a Tale

Published: Tuesday, July 21st, 2009, by the Daily Local News- "Serving Chester County"- (Click for original link)

A humpback whale swims toward the Alaskan fishing boat, the Newt-Tralizer,
as Matt Musslewhite, at the stern, braces for impact. Also in the photo is Tim Tatum's boot.
(Photo credit: Patti Tatum)

GUSTAVUS, Alaska -

A collective gasp rose up from everyone aboard our Alaskan charter, the 30-foot fishing boat Newt-Tralizer, and a chorus of alarmed voices cried out, "Oh my God!"

I glanced up from my fishing reel, absorbed in the chore of cranking up a hefty halibut from the ocean floor. I stopped reeling and my jaw dropped to the deck as a 40-ton black torpedo broke the surface directly in front of me, barely 30 yards away, coming at us like the proverbial runaway freight train.

The torpedo was an adult humpback whale, and our anchored vessel rested squarely in his determined path. From our perspective, a disastrous collision was inevitable.

"Everyone hold on!" shouted our captain, Matt Musslewhite as he stood at the stern reeling in a fishing line, and we all braced for the anticipated impact.

At that moment visions of Moby Dick ramming the whaling ship Pequod, the doomed Captain Ahab lashed to his side, flashed through my mind. Of course, in Herman Melville's classic seafaring novel, Moby Dick had both motive and metaphor, provoked by the sting of Ahab's harpoons.

Our blubbery adversary apparently was simply intent on hastily hightailing it to his next herring buffet. And of course, the mythical Moby was a sperm whale, and a white one at that, while humpbacks, like their humongous cousin the blue whale, are fitted with baleen instead of teeth.

With few exceptions, humpback whales are gentle giants that spend their summers roaming the Gulf of Alaska, gorging themselves primarily on dense schools of little silvery fish called herring -- along with any other snacks, including clouds of zooplankton -- that they happen to scoop up in their gaping maws.

This feeding frenzy is a seasonal phenomenon spurred by the near round-the-clock sunlight that marks the summer solstice in these northern waters. The almost constant sunlight triggers an immense bloom of nutritious organisms and the effect is felt up and down the food chain drawing vast schools of bait fish like pollack and herring that, in turn, attract flocks of hungry seabirds and a host of marine mammals.

Foremost among these are vast numbers of whales (primarily humpbacks) that migrate to these northern climbs from their winter haunts in the more temperate waters of the Hawaiian Islands. And the sheltered seas of the Icy Straight near Gustavus, Alaska, serve as an immensely popular summer feeding ground for these creatures.

My wife, Patti, and I were staying in Gustavus as guests of Suzie Daniels, owner and operator of Ripple Cove Charters, for a few days of fishing and wildlife watching. This time of year Icy Strait (located at the mouth of Glacier Bay) becomes a breathtaking, mystical place, framed by the majestic backdrop of the snow-capped peaks of the Beartrack Mountains to the east and the rugged Fairweather Range to the west.

Scanning the waters of Icy Straight, we watched as vapor plumes exhaled from the blowholes of surfacing humpbacks constantly filled the air, dozens of them often visible at a time. Thick flocks of gulls hovered above these same waters awaiting their own chance at fresh herring as the entire Icy Strait eco-system teemed with life. The continual sounds of water being shot from blowholes coupled with the vocal rumblings of these creatures bore a striking similarity to the soundtrack from Jurassic Park.

Incidentally, Daniels' fishing boats, the River Moon and The Newt-Tralizer, are among the most technologically advanced in the Gustavus fleet. The Newt-Tralizer boasts a hydrophone that permits guests to hear underwater audio, primarily the sounds of whales. It also employs an underwater infrared camera that allowed us to view a variety of creatures on the ocean floor including sea urchins, starfish, coral, and assorted fishes. But for wildlife enthusiasts, the multitude of humpback whales here remains the real show stopper.

One of the most intriguing collegial behaviors of the humpback is something called "bubble netting." A group of as many as 20 humpbacks or more surround a school of fish (almost always herring) and one designated whale swims in circles beneath the surface, exhaling air in a wall of bubbles that encircles the fish and panics them into swimming into a concentrated mass near the surface. Then, as if on some signal, the whales all rise up from the depths in unison, their hungry mouths wide open, gulping down as many herring as they can. While we didn't witness any bubble netting activity ourselves, other members of our party had, and were astounded by the sight of so many whales breaking the surface in such simultaneous symmetry.

These whales typically expose their arching backs as they cruise across the surface - thus the "humpback" designation. But more spectacularly, they often breach completely out of the water and come crashing down in huge splashes - an act we observed many times each day.

I asked First Mate Kelly Moxley -- Captain Musslewhite's bride of just five days -- why the whales engage in these breaching behaviors. "Because they can," she replied matter-of-factly, although I suspect it may sometimes have something to do with feeding activity.

But while breaching behavior is fairly common, a whale ramming a fishing boat is virtually unheard of -- which brings us back to the harrowing humpback episode recounted at the opening of this column. Perhaps most remarkable as we braced ourselves for the crush of blubber against fiberglass was the fact that my wife Patti had the presence of mind to snap a phenomenal photograph of the whale bearing down on us at full throttle.

At the same time, in a desperate effort to alert the whale to our presence, Musslewhite began stomping with all his might at the stern of the boat and, to our utter amazement, at the last possible nanosecond, the humpback instantaneously changed course and dove directly beneath the boat. For such an awkward looking and cumbersome creature, the whale proved that, when pressed, it could move its ungainly bulk with the watery agility of Michael Phelps turning a lap at the end of the pool.

Now breathing a collective sigh of relief, none of us could fathom how the leviathan had avoided smashing into the boat — not even so much as the slightest bump or scrape. Incredibly, despite the whale passing directly beneath me, I still managed to boat the halibut I had on the line, a respectable 60-pounder.

Captain Musslewhite, born and bred in southeastern Alaska and, at age 34, a salty veteran of the area's fishing culture, had never experienced such a too-close-for-comfort encounter with a humpback. Days later he was still telling the tale.

"I looked right down into its blowhole!" he marveled, "but if that whale had hit us square, it would have turned the boat around sideways, and maybe worse." And that was just our first morning testing the waters of Icy Strait with plenty more amazingly awesome Alaskan adventures yet to come.

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