Month: July 2020

Sei Whales

The Sei whale is a Baleen whale that is one of the fastest whales in the world. It also is the third largest rorqual after the blue whale and the fin whale. The sei whale lives in most of the oceans and adjoining seas. The sei whale however doesn’t live in polar and subtropical waters. Sei whales live to around 70!  The scientific name for the sei whale is the Balaenoptera borealis.

The sei whale’s diet consists of zooplankton, copepods, krill and other shrimp like animals. The sei whale eats around 2000 lbs of food a day! The sei whale is very fast reaching up to 31 mph to catch fish and krill. 

The average size for a sei whale is 13.7 m for males and 15 m for females. They males weigh around 17 tons and the females weigh 18.5 ton. The pups at birth are 4.4–4.5 m (14–15 ft ) in length and sei whales usually have one pup every 2-3 years. They sometimes have twins but that’s pretty rare. The sei whale is a dark grey color on the top of their body with spots of lighter color. Their underside is either a light grey or an off white-ish color. They have a dorsal fin that is small and shaped like a dolphins. Their tail is thick and their fluke is pretty small compared to their body. 

Sei whale usually travel alone, or they travel in a pod up to 6 individuals.  Sei whales are almost never seen with their flukes out of the water, they also rarely breach. Sei whales don’t look too dissimilar to the Byrd whale, but the byrd whale is slightly smaller. Sei whales aren’t very great divers and they normally go to slightly deeper water for around 5-15 minutes. They blow their blowhole every 45-90 seconds, and unlike fin-whales they tend to try to not lift themselves out of the water and instead, they stay fully in the water.
The sei whale feeds near the surface of the water using its baleen plates to suck water and food in and then pushing out everything that was in its mouth. When everything gets pushed out the water leaves but the food and little particles get stuck in between the plates. The whales eat whats left after the water is gone. The sei whale competes for food against, the clupeid fish ( such as herring), the basking whale, and right whales.

The sei whale was hunted nearly to extinction by people all around the world. In 1979, the whales became protected in most places. The sei whale in now endangered and is protected almost everywhere. The current population is around 80,000 sei whales in the wild. Scientists think there were about three times as many sei whales in the wild before whaling.

I feel so lucky that I got to see a sei whale in the Sea of Cortez. It was truly an amazing experience to see something so big, graceful, powerful, and beautiful. It was truly a once in a lifetime experience.

During the COVID lockdown we have learned to appreciate the small exciting moments as they come. Last week, we had the most exciting 24 hours in the past 4 months. This was the day that we decided to pull out some shark teeth. If you haven’t already read it, go check out Lucy’s previous post as she highlights our extraordinary dentistry skills. We were all pretty tired after a full day in the sun and we were finally getting the smell of rotting shark flesh out of our heads. 

Dad decided to head to bed early while the rest of us watched Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It’s a great movie, we would all highly recommend. After we had finished we were all getting ready to head to bed when out of nowhere a small black blur flew into our boat. Not knowing what it was, all four of us started shrieking. We were screaming for probably too long before realizing it was a small, lost bird. Still don’t know how dad slept through it. I ran to my room and shut the door, Sally did the same. After taking a deep breath I opened my door to head out. I opened my door only to come face to face with the bird I was hiding from. So back into my room I went. I only came out once I was sure that ‘it’, I still had no idea what this creature was, I thought it was a bat, was gone for good. It only took a few minutes for mom to wrap the little bird in a towel and get him on the right track out the door. Still, those few minutes were some of the most exciting since COVID entered the picture. 

We all went to sleep, a little frazzled from all the excitement. The next morning we got up, put the sails up, and headed towards our next destination. It was a longer sail so we turned off the engine and threw out our fishing line. The day crept along, the sun blazing down on us. I was on watch, listening to some music and trying to keep from overheating. Then the bzzzzzz of the fishing line went off and I jumped out of my seat. Everyone rushed out into the cockpit and dad helped steady the rod while I cranked in the fish. It turned out to be a 30 inch, 8 pound mahi! We hadn’t caught a mahi in a while and it is one of our favorite fish. Dad and I were just starting to filet the fish when the line started going crazy again. Lucy took the reel and cranked and cranked. It was another mahi and it was a big one! We got it into the boat and then, it spit out the hook, flopped down our stairs and swam away. Very disappointing but there’s always next time. Dad and I finished the cleaning process of the fish I caught. Soon after we had cleaned everything up, the line ws buzzing again and Sally reeled in yet another mahi. It was smaller than the previous two but still made a very tasty meal. We cleaned everything up again and sat down to take a break. Three fish in such a short amount of time was crazy! Very exciting. 

 

Lucy and I went to adjust the sails, as the wind was dying. Out of nowhere, there was a huge puff of air shooting out of the ocean about 5 feet off our boat. Lucy and I were a bit rattled to put it nicely. We soon recovered and went to watch the massive whale play at our bow. Normally a pod of dolphins will swim out to our boat and play right in front of us. But dolphins are significantly smaller than whales. This whale, what we think to be a sei whale (Sally should have a post on these guys coming soon), was over 50 feet. For reference, our boat is 37 feet. It would swim around, come up for air, show us its belly and keep swimming with us. Willie loved the whale and we had to hold him back to keep him from jumping in. At one point, we lost sight of the whale. We thought he had gone off to keep swimming but then! A blast of air came up in our trampolines in between the hulls and soon the giant was swimming out from underneath our boat. As cool as the entire thing was, seeing a whale swim up from under my home was a bit shocking. The whale stuck with us for a good 30-45 minutes and by the time he left, it was time for us to start thinking about putting the sails down and anchoring.

Something that being on lockdown has really brought out is the little adventures or minutes of something new that become the excitement for the next week. So for us, this past week was a small bird, three good sized mahi, and a huge whale.

 

Lucy, Sally and I have still been working on scout work!! A bit ago we completed almost all of our geocaching merit badge. One last step we could not complete at the time was to actually go and find a cache. Until recently, we didn’t find it safe to go find a cache or there weren’t any available. A few days ago, we went to complete the final part of this badge. 

We found a small list of caches on the islands we were planning on visiting. Once we made it to one of these spots, we decided it was safe to go into a beach (with no other humans in sight) and try it out. We set up a hike time with the two other boats in our group, 7 pm. Unless you get up before the sun, chances are it will reach over 100 degrees during your hike. So we went in the evening, still mid to high 90’s but much better without the blazing sun directly overhead. We started down the trail and less than a minute in came to our first obstacle. Water. Most of us were wearing sandals, flip-flops, or other water shoes but a handful of us were not. We decided that those who didn’t want to ruin their shoes could make it through barefoot. The trail continued on, the water staying constantly at my knees. It made for slow going but lots of giggles and splashes.  

We made it out of the water and back to the traditional desert rocks, sand, and dust. Now with squeaking, slippy shoes we continued our journey up the side of a large hill. With only a few cactus pricks and a few confusing trail markers we made it to where the cache was supposed to be hiding. 

We were looking for a large, dead cactus with a pile of rocks near the base. As we neared the exact location of the cache, the only thing looking like a cactus was a log shaped, rotting, piece of wood. There were also a lot of rocks. A lot a lot of rocks. So we started lifting up the rocks near what we thought was where the base of the cactus would’ve been. After about half an hour of looking, Dad made it down the path, the adults were chatting at the top while a few of the kids searched. Within 30 seconds of glancing towards the many piles of rocks, he spotted it. We opened up the cache, swapped out a bracelet for a beaded necklace, wrote our name and date in the logbook and hid it for the next adventurers. This cache was placed in 2006 and we saw names and dates from many years ago written on the logbook which was really neat to see. 

The sun had started to let up some of its heat and an evening breeze settled in as we made our way back to the dinghy. It was a gorgeous sunset walk and a fun way to complete another merit badge.

 

Hello everyone! This is Lucy, it’s been awhile since I last posted but I am going to tell you about a story from a few days ago…

It all started with Sally saying “Hey guess what we found on the beach today?” 

“What?” I asked curiously, guessing it was some sort of animal. 

“Two shark heads!” was the answer, one that I  was definitely not expecting. As you can imagine there were alot of follow up questions. 

  We went to examine them closer the next day with an idea. A dentistry idea. We were going to try to get the teeth/jaws from it so we could have shark teeth. Heidi, Sally, and I packed a bucket with the things that we might need. Pliers, big serrated knife, scissors, water, shoes, and sunscreen. We were all excited to go, it was a new adventure, something that we hadn’t had in a while! Once we are all packed and ready to go we left on the dinghy to our friends we have been isolating with on the boats Arena and Utopia. We had a full dinghy that was full of laughter and lots of talking on the short but very windy and bumpy ride in. 

We unloaded on the beach and the rest showed me to the shark. When we got there I was so surprised. I was expecting a shark skeleton, but this seemed pretty fresh still and looked like the pictures of sharks heads you would see. 

The day before we figured out it was  a mako shark, one of the fastest sharks. We looked at it for a little bit then went to work. Sally and Heidi picked up the shark head- (their noses plugged) with two sticks and dumped it in the water to get out the bugs. (I should mention right now that rotting shark smell is DISGUSTING. We all agreed it is worse than fish or rotting fish. So very very unpleasant.) Once all the bugs were out, it was time for taking out the jaws. Sally and Riley successfully sawed through the extra head near the jaws.  

At one point near this time we saw a wiggly tooth, and Bronwyn came in with the pliers. “Don’t worry, I’m good at pulling out wiggly teeth, I got some practice.” She exclaimed smiling, she had been losing lots of teeth lately. We all started laughing and sure enough, the tooth came out easily. Sally, Bronwyn, and Riley ran off to get a glass jar to put it in. 

Heidi and I continued sawing then we gave the teeth and gums to Riley, Bronwyn, and Sally for them to extract the teeth and rinse them. Ada, Ava, Heidi, and I continued to try to get as much of the jaw out by sawing, holding it in place, and using the pliers. We were all very successful and after 30 minutes to an hour we had a glass jar full  of teeth. There was only one problem…They absolutely stunk. We all went back to our boat and put the teeth in muriatic acid and water. It bubbled up so much, but we added more water and it seemed to be working.  

We realized that it would take a while for it to work so we started playing some games. After playing the same games for a while you get more creative with your games. We played a game called “quack”, categories, and alibi. After lots of games and lots of laughing, everyone went back to their boats for the day.  

The next day once the teeth were all clean and bleached we all made necklaces out of them. 

 It was a fun, interesting, adventure and new thing to do. I would never ever think I would be doing “dentistry” on a shark, but it was surely an experience like no other that I have done! 

Hello from the Sea of Cortez! We are going to try to get back to our blog after another hiatus.  Of course our plans changed with the rest of the world’s as Covid 19 entered the arena.  We are still in Mexico, currently in Bahia de Concepcion.  We had a great sail up the Baja coast.  Each of the girls reeled in a Mahi and a Sei whale played with us for about half an hour.  We are enjoying secluded beaches with lovely shells, whale skeletons, and plenty of paths to explore. We have included a photo of Heidi with her Mahi.

 

We will share some whale photos in our next post with Sally’s research on Sei whales.

We are hoping to see whale sharks a little further north, so here is what we know about them…

Whale Sharks by Sally

Whale sharks are slow moving, filter feeding, and the largest known fish species. They eat little fish, plankton, shrimp, fish eggs and lots of other little water creatures. The average size and weight of a whale shark is around 9.8 meters, or 32 feet, and each weighs around 9 tons. There are whale sharks that have been spotted that are 18 meters, or 56 feet, but it is rare to see a whale shark that is longer than 12 meters. 

Whale sharks live in all tropical and warm-temperate water. Whale sharks are known to live in the open sea but not in super deep water. However, it is known that they occasionally dive down to depths of 1,800 meters, 5,900 feet.

Whale sharks have lots of pups in a short amount of time, pregnant whale sharks have up to 300 pups that are born not all at once but over a period of time. The eggs stay in the female until they are hatched, then they have a live birth. The pups are 40-60 cm when they are newborn. A cool fact about whale sharks is that the males aren’t mature until they are 25. Also whale sharks can live up to 80-130 years old!

Another interesting fact about whale sharks is how they eat. Feeding occurs either by ram filtration or by active suction feeding. Ram filtration is when the whale sharks swim through a line of fish with its mouth open. The fish then basically swim into the sharks mouth. Active suction feeding is when they open and close their mouth creating a suction kind of like a vacuum cleaner. On average, juvenile whale sharks eat about 45 pounds of  plankton each day.

Even though whale sharks are so big, they pose no threat to humans. They can only eat creatures the same size or smaller than a quarter. So, go look for whale sharks and feel free to jump in with them.  However, please be careful and don’t crowd their space.  Moms won’t be happy if you get between her and her pups!