YESC Maine Expedition 2013 - Day 5 & VIDEO

3:15am came very quickly this morning as I rose to wake the crew for our drive to the top of Cadillac Mountain. Before I began the group wake up, I took a peek outside to see the beautiful night sky, but instead, was greeted with extensive cloud coverage. After conferring with Emma, we decided to push our Cadillac Mountain sunrise to another day.

Good thing! The cloud coverage remained all day, and heavy fogs moved in throughout the day. With the cloud coverage and colder temperatures, we knew we needed to bundle up extra for our whale watch and puffin tour!

We boarded the Atlanticat at the Bar Harbor Whale Watch Tour and, after a warning that the limited visibility would impede our ability to see whales, other travelers left the boat for refunds. However, YESC stayed strong, bundled up, and departed at 8:30am sharp from the dock for Petit Manan National Wildlife Refuge. Petit Manan is an island 17 miles northeast from Bar Harbor, and the objective of our journey was to find nesting Atlantic Puffin.

The gang just before departure!

We were handsomely rewarded for our perseverance! Not only did we get to see lots of Atlantic Puffin, we were treated to a variety of seabirds such as Great Shearwater, Arctic Tern, Razorbill, and Common Murre. These birds are only seen far out in the ocean so these are hard birds to find. Life birds for most of the group!

Atlantic Puffin in flight! We saw a large amount of puffins floating in the waters off Petit Manan, and some even flew right around our boat!

Great Shearwater doing what it does best - flying low to the water and "shearing" it with its wings!

The seabirds certainly treated us well, but the visibility definitely impacted our ability to find whales. After much searching, we were finally treated to two Minke Whales swimming nearby the boat! In addition to the whales, we saw Harbor Seals, Harbor Porpoises, and Dolphins. Those mammals were all too quick for me to snap any photos, but the views were quite enjoyable!

Connor, Harrison, Shaelyn, and Austin were the strong survivors of the group. They remained on the top deck of the ship for the majority of the cruise despite the arctic-seeming temperatures and winds!

In the video below, Shaelyn gives us an update while aboard the Atlanticat. You can almost feel the high winds:



Our eBird checklist from the tour is below. "X" means the species was observed, but a total number was not counted:

Bar Harbor - Whale Watch, Hancock, US-ME
Jul 10, 2013 8:30 AM - 12:15 PM
Protocol: Traveling
20.0 mile(s)
Comments: Estimated mileage. Traveled from Bar Harbor Whale Watch Tours Headquarters to Petit Manan to an unknown location in the ocean. Temperatures were very cold, winds were very high, and visibility was low due to fog. Checklist taken from the Upper Main Line YMCA Earth Service Corps Maine Expedition 2013 - www.umly.org/yesc
16 Species:
Great Shearwater  8
Wilson's Storm-Petrel  2
Northern Gannet  4
Double-crested Cormorant  2
Laughing Gull  X
Herring Gull  3
Great Black-backed Gull  X
Common Tern  X
Arctic Tern  X
Common Murre  X
Razorbill  X
Black Guillemot  X
Atlantic Puffin  X
Rock Pigeon  4
Song Sparrow  1
American Goldfinch  1

After the whale watch, we spent some time cleaning the cabin before heading into Bar Harbor to tour the town. What will tomorrow bring? Depends upon the weather (which is calling for 30% chance of scattered thunderstorms - who knows what that means!)

Looking forward to an awesome day tomorrow!

- BQ