STUDENT ENTRY

“Thar she blows!”

On April 18^thwe experienced a spectacular sight of multiple species of baleen whales feeding off the productive grounds of Platts Bank in the Gulf of Maine. The Whales, like us have completed their migration from the tropics to the temperate latitudes. Here is a poem Audrey Sheehan wrote in the Caribbean, when we first witnessed these spectacular creatures on our voyage.

I sit on deck, in the sprinkling rain,

waiting with my shipmates for our anchor watch to end.

All of a sudden we hear a blowhole.

The three of us jolt, rush up as if we have seen a ghost, to the rail,

unknowing of the creature that lies beneath us

There it is again…

“Phft!”

There in the full moonlight I see it.

The smooth gray dorsal of what I make out to be a bottlenose

“Phft!” One.

“Phft!” Two.

“Phft!” Three.

Sitting in the Port of Spain Harbor, on a starlit night in Trinidad,

On the Harvey Gamage at four in the morning.

- Audrey, Chagrin Falls, Ohio