Whale-Watching

The sea off the coast of Maine was almost the color of the sky, both of them shades of slate grey. The wind was wet as the bow of our boat punched through the slab-like waves and moved out into the Atlantic. This was a Calvinist ocean that had never heard of the warm blue Gulf Stream. Moby Dick country. Yet everyone aboard feels a sense of exhilaration. Our trawler, the Lady Bev, pushes on at about ten knots. We all strain to see . . . something.

Suddenly, off the bow at about 11 o’clock, I do see something, an immense spray of water. We have spotted whales. What I had seen was the aftermath of a gigantic whale leap, tons of mammalian flesh going acrobatic, lifting into the air and crashing back, shattering the surface of the ocean into an explosion of white.

SH

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Stephanie Hart

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The sea off the coast of Maine was almost the color of the sky, both of them shades of slate grey. The wind was wet as the bow of our boat punched through the slab-like waves and moved out into the Atlantic. This was a Calvinist ocean that had never heard of the warm blue Gulf Stream. Moby Dick country. Yet everyone aboard feels a sense of exhilaration. Our trawler, the Lady Bev, pushes on at about ten knots. We all strain to see . . . something.

Suddenly, off the bow at about 11 o’clock, I do see something, an immense spray of water. We have spotted whales. What I had seen was the aftermath of a gigantic whale leap, tons of mammalian flesh going acrobatic, lifting into the air and crashing back, shattering the surface of the ocean into an explosion of white.