Whale watching

         Today, Selwyn House went whale watching off the coast of the Bay of Fundy. The boat ride had remarkable scenery. We went for about a 4-hour boat ride. Selwyn went with our marine biologist expert Tracy.

         The whales that we had seen are all baleen type whales. One species of whale that we saw were minke whales. They were 35ft long and were the smallest type whales that we had seen today. Another whale that we saw was the humpback. The humpback was 55ft long and it feeds mostly on hearing and krill. The biggest whale that we had seen on our whale watching trip was the finback whale, and it is the second biggest species of whale in the world. Something that was interesting about all the whales is that we were able to identify the specific individual id of each whale if it is a returning whale by its tail. The reason is that the tail for all whales is like a fingerprint the texture and pattern of the white pigmentation is unique for each whale.     

       Beside whales we had the chance to see many different types of other marine animals. We saw Harbour seals have dog-like shaped faces, and they weigh up to 150kg. We also saw Grey seals weigh up to 350 kg, the females have light with dark spots and the males are dark with light spots. We had seen as well porpoise, which are similar to dolphins. They are 6ft long with a black back, and lighter color bellies.

      Something incredible that happened on the trip was a shark attack. Usually in the Bay of Fundy the sharks are rather small, and they are only capable of eating of not larger marine animals. However, today we had seen half of a dead carcass of porpoise, which was very fresh. Then out of nowhere we saw a shark grab the half corpse of the porpoise and drag the remainder of its body right down. We saw the outline of the shark and could see that it was about 11 ft. By the fins he was able to make the assumption that it was a great white shark. The guides are sending it for further analysis by a shark expert. The guides said that they have never seen a shark that strong that could rip a porpoise write in half. The guide was amazed and when he talked about the seals, he mentions how he says that they have never had a predator, but after seeing that shark he is not so certain. The entire crew had said that in their lifetime they are probably never going to witness a shark attack like that in the Bay of Fundy ever again.