Check out this weather. That's a negative 17! And yes, we still skied!
Sunday, February 6, 2022
Birthday Photos
Snorkeling with Humpback Whales in the Dominican Republic
I am a Bucket List kind of person and have had swimming with whales on my list for awhile. There are not many places in the world to swim with whales. You can do it in Tonga, French Polynesia, and the Silver Banks in the Dominican Republic. You can get so close - I think we got 20 feet away. The calves especially were so curious that they would come really close to us. One got so close that she tapped one of the people on our trip on the foot with her tail!
Here's a fun photo of Bryson.
And here's our video.
2022.02.05 Dominican Republic - Google Drive
But I am getting ahead of myself. Let's start by saying thanks to Lola for an amazing trip. And thanks to Alex and Nana for taking care of Scarlet while Bryson and I were gone. We also loved spending time with our favorite uncle, Uncle Rob and also Holly (who the kids call Ooly).
We traveled with Conscious Breath Adventures (there are only 3 operators for the Dominican Republic) and loved their owner, Gene Flipsie, Captain Jeff Pantukhoff (who started the Whaleman Foundation which saved the San Ignacio Bay in Mexico, the habitat for the grey whales), and guide Cat.
We learned a ton on our trip. So here are a few fun facts.
Fun fact #1) The Silver Banks is located on the east coast of the Dominican Republic. You fly into Puerto Plata. We barely made it out of Newark before the big snow storm!
Fun fact #2) The Silver Banks is believed to have the largest concentration of the North Atlantic humpback whale population compared to any other place in the world. It's known as the Sanctuary for the Marine Mammals. The area provides safety and protection to the humpback whales, since this is where the whales come to mate, give birth, and nurture their young.
Fun fact #3) The humpback is the 7th largest whale in the world (around 50 feet) with the sperm whale being the longest (60 feet). Humpback is part of Balleen family. They are part of the Mysticetes family which means they have: baleen plates, which they use for feeding, two blowholes, a symmetrical skull, and lower jawbones that are solid and do not join in the middle
The baleen is cool! There are hundreds of baleen plates, and the fringe inside each overlaps to create a strainer that allows the whale to filter its food from the ocean water. To gather its food, the whale will gulp or skim the water, and pass the water in between the baleen plates, trapping the prey inside. By feeding this way, a mysticete can gather large quantities of prey but avoid swallowing much salt water.
Humpbacks have a tiny throat - it's as big as a grapefruit! So they eat tiny, tiny food like krill. They will engage in cooperative feeding synchronized feeding by casting a bubble net to create a screen and then using vocalization to spook prey to surface and then eat away. But we didn't get to see that - because the whole time the whales travel and stay in the DR, they don't eat!
All dolphins are whales but not all whales are dolphins
Fun fact #4) I thought raising human kids is hard. Raising whales is a whole new ballgame. Humpback whales spend the the summer in the cold rich water near the Artctic in the winter and move to tropical waters to court and breed. They go back to same feeding and breeding grounds for their entire lives. They will travel from the Massachusetts to the Silver Banks (1,700 miles) or from Norway to the Silver Banks (3,000 miles) at about 100 miles per day. They'll be in the Silver Banks sometime between January through April. That entire time, they don't eat, even moms.
The gestation period is about a year. A 45 ton mom will lose 15 tons after birth. She'll birth a 12 foot calf born, which is around 1,200 lbs, and nurse the calf 50 gallons of milk a day so that the calf gains 100 pounds a day!
How do you know how old the baby is? Size and also looking at the barnacles on the calf. Barnacles don’t show up until 6 weeks.
Fun fact #5) Whales do lots of fun moves - like blowing bubbles, pectoral fin slapping on the surface, sing, lobtail (slap it's fluke), and breech. They can go from a standstill to a couple stroke of its fin, and boom - full on entire body out of the water, woah!
Why do they do all these things? Partly to get attention and partly for fun. For example, say there is a girl whale (technical term) on a blind date. She's got an escort (apparently, this is a technical term, because our guide would use it all the time), and she sees a cute whale off to the side. The girl whale might slap her pecks on this date (like batting her eyes at him) to get the other whale's attention. This is her way to be provocative. She's saying - you've got a chance with me, go ahead and challenge this escort next to me.
Or... a single whale may want to get attention and slap its fluke to say, "What does it take to get a drink around here?"
There's also a thing called a rowdy group. There will be one (yes just one) female whale already with an escort and 5 multiple challengers, sometimes up to 24. Woah!
Here's one of Bryson's goals for the week. Each day, we would get a few chocolates. Bryson would collect letters, and voila!
Fun fact #6) Whale songs are cool! The video above has a song, though my video of a singing whale was terrible (it's mostly water with a hazy whale in the background), so I ended up putting the video to a mom and calf. The whales that sing are apparently tend to be single whales. Whales will have one song they sing. It can change quickly. A whale will be singing a song, and then a slight change in the song in one hemisphere will pass to the next hemisphere. Wow!
Our guide shared that there was one whale that would sing and sing, but because he was singing in a different frequency, no other whale could hear him or sing back. Sad!
Before:
When we saw it...
Not a fun fact, but just for fun... #7) Whale jokes (courtesy of our guide):
A whale walks into a bar, and the bartender asks him, "How are you?"
The whale huffs, "I am feeling a little blue"
What kind of band does a whale play in?
An orcastra
In addition to an amazing whale trip, we were able to visit Ocean World. This is like a Sea World, which is not very ecotourist friendly. But nevertheless, Bryson and I had a good time.
Here's our video:
And to close our adventure. Check out this room that I booked (accidentally!) for Bryson and me. I was wondering why it was only 50 bucks. And yes, Bryson asked a lot of questions. Ugh.
And to close things off, here are Cat's and Whaleman's (Jeff's) videos.
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