Jay Borden spends his summers on Old Harbor in Vinalhaven and says it’s a great spot for viewing and photographing wildlife, especially birds and marine mammals.
On Wednesday, Borden enjoyed a treat as he was drinking his morning coffee.
“I was looking out on the harbor, which hasn’t yet filled up with its full complement of lobster boats this early in the season,” Borden said. “A splashing about 200 yards off caught my eye, and then a dorsal fin.”
He figured it must be a harbor porpoise making the rounds in the harbor, which is less common in the harbor then out in the sound.
“But then I saw the dorsal pause and just float in place for a moment or two. Not a porpoise,” Borden said.
He grabbed his camera and used the viewfinder to zoom in on the object. It was, in fact, a whale.
“Small, maybe 20 feet in length, but unmistakably a whale,” Borden said, “and after watching a bit longer, unmistakably a minke.”
Borden soaked in the uniqueness of the appearance as the whale swam closer to the shore, then started crisscrossing the harbor. It would sometimes circle in a small corner of the bay less than 50 yards off shore, in perhaps 15 feet of water.
Borden put his camera to work, taking photos and video of the whale. He eventually had to head off to an appointment in town, but the whale remained until early evening.
“I feel like it was an enormous privilege to see it,” Borden said of the minke sighting. “Asking around the neighborhood, friends who have lived here for 80 years or more have never seen one here.”
He even surveyed a neighbor, Van, a lobsterman in his late 80s. He had to see it to believe it.
“Well suh, it’s a whale all right,” the man said after viewing the photographic and video evidence. “Look at that blowhole.”
Borden, thrilled by the prospect of being able to share the fruits of his efforts, was kind enough to send along a video of the minke whale that he prepared.
According to the Maine Department of Marine Resources, minke whales are the smallest of our larger whale species behind the finback, the endangered North Atlantic right and the humpback whales.
Minke whales can reach up to 30 feet long and weigh as much as 18,000 pounds. They eat mostly small schooling fish such as sand lance, herring, young mackerel and krill, but also might consume single discarded fish.
Last month, a minke whale died after washing up on the shore at Long Sands Beach in York. The species has been under closer study during the last several years as scientists try to determine the cause of minke whale Unusual Mortality Events (UME) from Maine down to South Carolina.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there have been 148 minke whale strandings on the Atlantic coast since 2017. Of those, 31 have occurred in Maine, second only to 54 in Massachusetts.
Scientists still aren’t sure what is causing the UME’s, but the numbers have been declining slightly over the last three years. There have been eight such incidences thus far in 2023.
The high was 32 in 2018.
Those dynamics make Jay Borden’s extended sighting more thrilling for all of us who get the chance to watch the video. Thanks, Jay, for sharing your video!
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