whaling

You have to have a permit to get this close!

My boss Mark's wife Bree Witteveen (wow! someone who shares my name!) is a whale biologist out of Kodiak. She and Mark flew out here to do a bit of whaling (photo cataloging, biopsies with a dart gun) and let people ride along.

It's pretty crazy watching Bree at work. For one thing, sighting a humpback whale and then hitting the throttle straight for it seems pretty counter intuitive. To top that off, pulling out a firearm once you've reached within 10 feet of it is really exciting. The dart Bree shoots bounces off the whale, taking with it a tiny core of skin and blubber that will later be looked at in the lab.

Check out the tracks on the GPS! We hit an area off of Nagai that had over 20 whales! We must have gone in circles for hours trying to get good pictures of all their flukes (tails) so they could be identified. I'm not exactly sure how long it was because I took a nap. . .

The only reason why I would ever confess to such a thing is because I know Mark will be reading this.

He's the one who took the picture.

Most of these whales spend their winters in Hawaii, and some off the coast of Baja, Mexico.
They are some of the most mysterious animals with the worst smelling breath I have ever experienced in my short lifetime. I feel pretty blessed to have seen so many of them so close!