By Andrea Holbrook
Staff Writer
October 07, 2008 05:20 am A rare sighting of an adult blue whale in local waters was made by researchers at Gloucester-based Whale Center of New England during a research cruise aboard their 42-foot research vessel, The Mysticete, on Sunday morning. Whale Center staffers were on a standard cruise conducting research in area approximately 15 miles off the Gloucester coast where whale-watch boats usually don't go when they spotted about the blue whale, according to Mason Weinrich, the center's executive director and chief scientist. Blue whales are endangered and generally occupy colder waters than those found off New England; they are usually found off Iceland, Norway and northern Canada. When asked what might have lured the whale this far south, Weinrich said it was likely a food source drew it in. Despite their huge size, blue whales specialize in feeding on plankton, especially krill, a small shrimp-like crustacean, and are very good at homing in it, Weinrich said. During the nearly 45 minutes that the whale was observed, its limited movement around the area suggested that the animal was feeding. The blue was seen in the same area as about a dozen humpback whales, which were also feeding. "How long it stays depends on how good the food source stays," he said. During the sighting, Whale Center staff was able to photograph both sides of the animal, where each individual whale has a distinctive pigment pattern used to identify individual whales. These photos were e-mailed yesterday morning to an ocean-wide catalog of blue whales, the nonprofit Mingan Island Cetacean Study, coordinated by Richard Sears and Canadian whale researchers, which contains more than 300 individual whales. The center hopes to discover something of the whale's past history. Blue whales are the largest mammals, and possibly the largest animals, ever to live. The largest blue whale ever accurately measured was 102 feet, although animals longer than 90 feet are rare in the North Atlantic. Because of their great size, they were the first target for modern whalers, and were endangered by the 1930s. Currently, they are thought to number less than 10,000 worldwide; while there is no good population estimate for the North Atlantic, it is thought that less than 2,000 individuals survive today. Weinrich, who has experience with North Atlantic and North Pacific blue whales, said the whale spotted Sunday was clearly an adult and measured 70 to 80 feet long. The first recorded sighting off New England came in 1981; blue whales were seen only sporadically in the next two decades. In the past few years, sightings have been slightly more regular, although still rare. In 2002, five different whales were seen over a two-week period in September; last fall, three different individuals were seen off the Maine and New Hampshire coast in the fall. Weinrich said one of those three whales, a large adult, had never before been photographed. He said few sightings have been recorded this close to the Cape Ann shoreline; the whale spotted yesterday, like the one last fall, may never have been photographed before and might not have a history of past sightings. Andrea Holbrook may be contacted at aholbrook@gloucestertimes.com.
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