Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Whale strikes with sailboats are becoming more frequent. How to avoid whales and what to do when it happens. Whale Strike!! What if you HIT A WHALE with a Sail boat? (Tips from the Pros #3/P. Childress #53) - YouTube

Sorry, didn't view the video. Hope this isn't just a way to drive more views.

But on what basis do you say "whale strikes with sailboats are becoming more frequent"? Data please. And where are you talking? The globe? A local area?

It's a pretty amazing fact - if true.

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Sorry, didn't view the video. Hope this isn't just a way to drive more views.

But on what basis do you say "whale strikes with sailboats are becoming more frequent"? Data please. And where are you talking? The globe? A local area?

It's a pretty amazing fact - if true.

Mike, Watch the video and then you will have a whole list of needed verifications. There is only so much detail one can put in a video before it becomes overwhelming. Google is great for expanding on basic information, where you will find your verification and much more. This video is a basic theme and has to stick to it without wandering off in so many other possible directions. The one missing bit of information I am kicking myself for, is not mentioning the possible use of Jimmy Hendrix, Foxy Lady. Patrick Laine uses particular classical music, which seems to attract whales. Would Foxy Lady have the opposite effect? But now, to verify the effects of different music on different whales, that is a whole bit of new research and a different video someone else can do. But in the end, this is about trying not to damage more whales and trying not to have your sailboat damaged by a whale.....please keep that point in mind.

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Sail New England coast and Windwards. Whales are frequent in summer in New England and winter in windwards. They have the same migration pattern as I do. So have had whales on on four sides of the boat at times. Have had whales want to scratch an itch. Have had whales sleeping on the surface at night. Beyond whales on transit see pilot whales hanging out where I like to fish.
Things I've learned.
Porpoise are fine. Whales aren't. See whale spouting go around them. Figure out if they are stationary with calves or moving. Just like with a ship head behind them. You aren't in a massive steel or Aluminum whale watch boat best is to never head toward them for a peak but rather stay away.
Banging pots works as does engine with changing rpm.
Turn on engine. They can turn on a dime and sailing you are slow to change course or speed.
Some think colored bottom paint helps. Haven't seen anything that supports that opinion.
Most whales are solitary but will get together when calving or bubble feeding. If you see more than one whale get as far away as possible. It's the whale you don't see that will hit you.

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Sail New England coast and Windwards. Whales are frequent in summer in New England and winter in windwards. They have the same migration pattern as I do. So have had whales on on four sides of the boat at times. Have had whales want to scratch an itch. Have had whales sleeping on the surface at night. Beyond whales on transit see pilot whales hanging out where I like to fish.
Things I've learned.
Porpoise are fine. Whales aren't. See whale spouting go around them. Figure out if they are stationary with calves or moving. Just like with a ship head behind them. You aren't in a massive steel or Aluminum whale watch boat best is to never head toward them for a peak but rather stay away.
Banging pots works as does engine with changing rpm.
Turn on engine. They can turn on a dime and sailing you are slow to change course or speed.
Some think colored bottom paint helps. Haven't seen anything that supports that opinion.
Most whales are solitary but will get together when calving or bubble feeding. If you see more than one whale get as far away as possible. It's the whale you don't see that will hit you.

I've been gaining a lot of experience with whales these past few years through the St. Lawrence and in Newfoundland waters. Lots of pilot whales and humpbacks. And even bigger ones like Fin and (perhaps) Right.

They seem pretty aware of us when we're motoring, but under sail - not so much. I've diverted around pods a number of times, but I also love being close to these amazing animals.

Last season we had a couple of humpbacks visit us at anchor. Pitch black. I'm awakened to the PShhhhtt - massive exhale right beside the boat. Then the boat starts rocking, I assume from the swish of the fins. Two of them circled us a few times, I assume just to check us out. Very cool, but I did wonder/fret if they could see our anchor chain.

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Whale strikes are becoming more frequent? Frankly, I doubt that. I have never seen any evidence to that effect, and I would be extraordinarily surprised if the OP could come up with any real data to support his claim.

I will apologize most obsequiously if I am proven wrong, but I am pretty certain this is just another internet claim, completely unsupported by any facts, and invented solely for the purpose of driving more clicks.

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Whale strikes are becoming more frequent? Frankly, I doubt that. I have never seen any evidence to that effect, and I would be extraordinarily surprised if the OP could come up with any real data to support his claim.

I will apologize most obsequiously if I am proven wrong, but I am pretty certain this is just another internet claim, completely unsupported by any facts, and invented solely for the purpose of driving more clicks.

This is what I suspect as well, but I wanted to give the OP the benefit of the doubt. It's a pretty clear claim.

On the driving clicks issue, I'm getting pretty annoyed at people who simply post a teaser line and then toss in a youtube video. It seems rather insulting to this community to be using it largely as a means of driving clicks on your own revenue-generating link.

By all means, use videos to support a discussion. But DISCUSS it here, don't just toss out a teaser and a link.

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Delivering a boat for the Heineken in SXM years ago on the no-moon midnight watch with an old hand named Rudy (he was John Steinbeck's private charter captain over 50 years earlier). Rudy sent me below to make coffee. I come back up into the cockpit and all of a sudden, something really, really, really stank. I mean 3 day old fish factory stink. I said "what the F is that??" Rudy says "whale, he's right beside us." Pitch black, he was 30' off our port side and blew again. Unbelieveable stink. Suffocating stink. Rotten crill stink.

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Delivering a boat for the Heineken in SXM years ago on the no-moon midnight watch with an old hand named Rudy (he was John Steinbeck's private charter captain over 50 years earlier). Rudy sent me below to make coffee. I come back up into the cockpit and all of a sudden, something really, really, really stank. I mean 3 day old fish factory stink. I said "what the F is that??" Rudy says "whale, he's right beside us." Pitch black, he was 30' off our port side and blew again. Unbelieveable stink. Suffocating stink. Rotten crill stink.

Hahaha......some memories you can't shake!

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Have had only one encounter with what I thought at first sighting was a whale. Turned out to be what would be considered a small adult whale shark ( about 25-30' long). It was a magical experience, second only to swimming with manatees at Three Sisters Springs near Crystal River. Both experiences were simply awe inspiring. The whale shark came within a few feet of the boat and left me totally mesmerized. Awesome creatures.

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

I don't know whether whale strikes are more common, but it seems like we hear about them and floating container accidents with a lot more frequency than we used to. I don't know whether this is because of better reporting, or more boats out there in whale grounds, or whale recovery numbers, or just me paying greater attention. The video itself does provide some useful information.

Jeff

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

I would like to have an underwater whistle or sound device to alert the whales.

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

They come around but the Humpbacks seem to be the only ones oblivious to your presence, the rest seem to know exactly where you are and don't smack into you much. The second one is a gray known locally as "Captain Hook".

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Spent several years in the Beaufort, researching how bowheads react to ship noise, helicopters low overhead, seismic pingers etc. .Often found them scratching their backs on a drill ship. or under way while apparently asleep My 671 jimmy wasn't enough to alarm them so several near collisions were avoided only by luck. For halitosis, its hard to beat the grey whales around Vancouver Island.

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Your not an outlier , I search similarly. 😀

 

Re: Whale Strike, Are We Sinking?

Your not an outlier , I search similarly. 😀

Ditto!.

 

OK, hang on a second folks.

I will discuss with the other Mods. So give us a day or 2 please as we are all busy at the moment.

Me, for one, is totally against Click Bait subject title boxes and click bait posts.

So, please, everyone, be prepared to make your subjects better and your original posts better.

:grin

I made the subject title a bit more gentle


Mark

 

OK, hang on a second folks.

I will discuss with the other Mods. So give us a day or 2 please as we are all busy at the moment.

Me, for one, is totally against Click Bait subject title boxes and click bait posts.

So, please, everyone, be prepared to make your subjects better and your original posts better.

:grin

I made the subject title a bit more gentle

Mark

Thanks Mark. I appreciate the serious consideration.

I've got no problem referencing outside sources, but all too often we see this kind of, as you say "clickbait" posting, whose only purpose is to drive traffic elsewhere. It's not just videos. We've seen plenty of the same with personal blogs as well.

If you're going to use external links, then type out (yes, this is a text-based forum) your key points. Support them with external links if you must, but put them down here so those of us who won't or can't view these high bandwidth links can still participate.

I'm very interested in discussing the issue of whale strikes. And I'm pleased the discussion quickly got going. So it's been interesting so far (aside from the little tangent). I hope it can continue.

 

I don’t see how cruising videos, in a video sub-forum, would need to have anything more than video content. Duh.

Some are over thinking this. Some just have a hard on for the OP. It’s obvious.

On a more balance note, I’ve seen the OPs YouTube channel. At first, it was distinctly documented that the weren’t doing it for money. While I’m certain they aren’t making any profit, given the cost to produce the vids, they did put the Tip Jar needle in their arm. You just can’t have it both ways. You’re either posting interesting videos, or you’re posting to look for tips.

This OP has made interesting contributions and posted more than simply the vids. However, the motivation is murky.

 

If you don't want to see a video, don't click on it. It's that easy. If people want to use our forum to post videos, what problem does it cause?

The topic of whales is important and interesting. It seems a good fit for our forum. I watched it. It was a bit simplistic (sorry), but it did spark some interesting discussion and sharing.

My take-away about the topic is that sometimes people get to darn close to the whales on purpose. Great sightseeing, but poor safety - both for the whales and for us.

 

We crossed Stellwagon Bank a few years back, after departing Boston and heading outside of Cape Cod on passage to Nantucket. We lost count of the whales we saw. Maybe 20. Maybe more. Some were probably repeats. We never altered course, not to get closer, not to get further. The closest of them was about 200 feet away, others 500. It was the most amazing thing we ever saw on the water. Not scary at all.

Prior and since, we’ve only seen single whales. Once, off Gloucester, we saw one breach. That was cool.

 

My perception is that the whales (and dolphins) are as aware of us as we are of them, so most of the time I don’t attempt to alter course. But there was at least one occasion where a pod of large (Fin?) whales crossed our path while under sail such that I became worried about a strike. I altered course in this case, but I don’t know if it was necessary.

I’ve yet to come upon a sleeping whale. I suppose in this case the whale might not be aware of our presence. I’m not sure what you can do about that though.

I can find no evidence that indicates whale strikes with our kinds of vessels are on the increase. There seems to be some evidence they may be on the rise for fast-moving ships like frieghters and ferries. This seemed focused in certain areas only.

Here’s a little display we had of some humpbacks a couple months ago while rounding the northern tip of Newfoundland. They came within a few hundred feet of us while we were under sail. They seemed to intentionally linger with us for at least 1/2 hr.

While they were close, and breaching, I never felt there was any danger of a strike. Like I say, they seemed to be as aware of us as we were of them.

Having had a fair bit of experience with other wild animals, I’d say this is the norm. In most cases animals are more aware of us than we are of them, so why would whales be any different?

 

Where does this statistic come from? I think it's bogus. Haven't seen whales for years... We did see a whole bunch of them south of Gardiners Island about 10 years ago. We were surprised.

Edit... them was meant to be dophins...

whales in Gulf of ME and MA Bay and a

Both in Atlantic Ocean

 

Back in the early '50s Whales were rare , mostly wiped out by commercial harvesting but basking sharks were really common and used for sport harpooning. Great way to show off masculine prowess. Their livers had no value since greased skid roads were over taken by skid steer machinery. Such is progress. The sharks became so numerous that the fisheries department decided to cull. them (they'd run out of surplus war time explosives to destroy huge numbers of sea lion rookeries and were maybe bored). Anyway a large hydraullicly operated knife blade was mounted on the bow of a chartered ex seine boat and succeeded in wiping them out. Just a legend on the coast now. As a aside the boat Pyliis Cormack was renamed GreenPeace and went to the Aleutians to protest .To no avail but the last of the sea otters were found and removed from the blast site. They are doing well and so it goes.

 

On Veterans Day a gray whale was filmed swimming under surfers at Doheny Beach just outside Dana Point Harbor, water is less than 15 feet deep. Here's a link for those who haven't seen it yet.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/Giant-Whale-Swim-Under-Surfers-California-564944242.html

 

Cool vid. I haven't seen it before. Thanks.

If I were to anthropomorphize the whale's behavior I'd say it appeared to be curious about these floating critters. It intentionally breathed before coming into contact, then purposely dove deep enough to swim underneath the people.

I believe this is how all intelligent animals would behave.

 

Bowheads have been documented playing with floating logs in the Beaufort. Game,,, take log real deep. watch it zoom back to surface. Fortunately not many paddle or surf boards in the Arctic.

 

You have seen this - no?

 

Wow! I would love to see a whale from our boat...but I would be nervous I'm Sure!! Great tips.

 

A couple cool videos on whale encounters.

The whale stuff starts about 8 minutes in.

Killer Whale steals a sailboat

 

A couple cool videos on whale encounters.

The whale stuff starts about 8 minutes in.

What a great job the Frenchman did to get the underwater clips of pilot whales. Thanks for posting the link.

 

I recommend a harpoon, but o ly if the whale is headed in your direction.

 

Yeah...and watch out for the Sea Shepard's and the Nissan Maru???

 

Another whale video. This guy had seen the Sailing Frenchman's video and decided to play the same music to see if it attracted the whales.

Whale stuff starts about 3 minutes in: