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(wilson - 9/2/06)Today we woke up in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada. I got up at 7:30, and unusually, my mom was already up. When everybody had awoken, we got on our bikes and rode to eat breakfast in St. Andrews, which isn't far away at all from the RV park. We ate at a place called the Red Whale, and we had to hurry because we were eating at 9:00, the whale watch boat we were going on was leaving at 10:00, and everybody was boarding at 9:30. We ran onto the wharf and boarded the boat at 9:50 (I think). There were 3 floors on the whalewatching boat. The main one was full of chairs, the top floor had no ceiling and was another place where you could sit down, and the lower floor was the bathrooms (washrooms for you Canadians). After a while we all went up to the top floor and soon we spotted a fin whale (finback whale to some of you guys). They're the second largest species of whale in the world, after the blue whale, which can grow to 100+ feet. Finbacks can get up to about 90 feet. We watched the fin whale go up and down at the surface a while, and I tried to get some footage of it with the video camera. I zoomed in once, meaning to record a short video, but I realized I hadn't pushed the record button! Grrrrrr... Later, the fin whale went off to find more food and we had to search elsewhere for whales. Here is the list of the whales they have at the Bay of Fundy:
Humpback - up to 60 feet, they are known for their spectacular breaches
Fin/Finback - up to 90 feet, it has a bigger dorsal fin than other whales
Northern Right - up to 60 feet, it has a huge head
Harbor Porpoise - up to 10 feet, haha
Minke - up to 35 feet, the smallest of balleen whales
and no dolphins!
Later we saw a minke whale doing some BIG breaches off in the distance. Unfortunately, it was so far away it was just a black line coming out of the water, followed by a big spray of water. The boat raced towards it, but it can go only about 22 mph, so it stopped breaching by the time we got there. After that we saw lots of harbor seals and porpoises.
The whale watch was really cool. I thought it would be a lot harder to find a few whales in the middle of a huge bay. But nope! We saw a bunch!
Here's another symbol picture of a whale. If you can't see it, your retinas must not be working properly.
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And just to tell you, it's vertical and the dashes are just the background