Happy Humpback Whale

     Summer seemed to explode into existence this weekend at the Jersey Shore.  Once Friday’s rains subsided around noon, both the sun and crowds both came out in abundance.  The beach weather was wonderful, and it seemed as though the volume of visiting people was greater than during the Fourth of July holiday.  With this in mind, I stayed away from my favorite locale, Island Beach State Park, which had reached its capacity by mid-morning each day.

I spent the weekend mid-mornings and afternoons at a local beach with family.  I sat under an umbrella and kept an eye and half my attention to the ocean in front of me.  Some birds were around, but nothing spectacular.  The usual local summer gulls were around picking on some bait fish in the ocean and some unattended potato chips on the beach.  Common terns, a few royal terns and ospreys mixed in with the ocean-going gulls.  The only noteworthy birds were a couple passing brown pelicans and a great shearwater.  Pelicans become less common to rare the more north you go from Island Beach.  The shearwater was distant, just below the horizon, and would have gone unnoticed if I hadn't been looking through my binoculars at that moment.  

More noticeable was the marine life that has begun to increase locally as the water temperatures rise.  A week or so ago I was out on a friend's boat about 25 miles out and the water temperature was about 79 degrees.  That is tropical-like, and we were still nearly 70 miles from the Gulf Stream.  Closer to shore, at the bathing beaches, the water is in the low 70-degree range.  Saturday, there were several pods of bottle nose dolphins roaming the waters just outside of the beach patrol-imposed swimmer boundaries.  Some pods were just cruising through, and others were playing dolphin games, such as partially jumping out of the water and slapping tails on the surface.  But it was the presence of Cownose rays that attested to the warm water.  The rays migrate to our area in the summer.  They often travel in schools and close to shore.  They are chunky, brown rays that reach nearly three feet across from wingtip to wingtip.  The front of the ray's head has two bulbous lobes that resemble the snout of a cow.  Several schools swam through the bathing area, passing under or past some bathers and surfers, but never making any threatening contact. 

Humpback whale raising its tail (fluke) in tail-slapping display off of Seaside Park, NJ.  © S. Weiss

On Sunday, I did not see any rays and only a few dolphins.  But in mid-afternoon I noticed a large splash of water out near the horizon.  Through my binoculars I saw a humpback whale crashing back into the water.  I know I excitedly said aloud, "Wow!  There's a whale out there!"  Yet, everyone else in my vicinity either did not hear me or did not care.  I, however, enjoyed it and watched the whale for about a half hour.  Once I established its location in my field of view, I was able to watch without the need for binoculars.  The first half of the show it would raise its tail high up out of the water and slap it down on the water, creating large white-water splashes.  This practice is called lobtailing.  Then it rolled to its side and began slapping its pectoral fin on the water.  From my seat on the beach, I could see its long fin raised in the air near the horizon.  It seemed to hold it up for seconds at a time before smacking it down on the water’s surface.  This went on for some time before it stopped and disappeared below the surface.

Humpback whale raising its pectoral fin during fin-slapping display off of Seaside Park, NJ.  © S. Weiss

Part of me felt sad that no one else on the beach paid any attention to this incredible live show, but not enough to ruin my enjoyment of it.  I'm sure, as I write this now, that many of these same indifferent people would be gathering with morbid curiosity had that magnificent creature instead become stranded in the surf, or worse, dead on the beach.

*****

In a coincidence with the start of Shark Week, my wife, daughter and I found fossil shark teeth at the water's edge on Sunday.  My daughter is an expert at finding shark teeth.  She has found hundreds since her college days in Florida and seems to find them with little to no effort.  This was the first time that my wife and I found any at the beach.

Fossil shark teeth, Seaside Park, NJ.  © S. Weiss

Some impressive fossil shark teeth found by my daughter.  © S. Weiss

Part of my daughter's collection of fossil shark teeth.  © S. Weiss