Gulf of Maine

The Gulf of Maine is both a migratory destination and a place where ocean currents set an immense seasonal food chain in motion. Each year, Humpback whale populations travel north from the Caribbean to feed in its nutrient-rich waters. There, vast aggregations of whales, fish, and birds can make human observers seem incidental to a spectacle organized by the sea itself.

A seasonal destination

Every summer, Humpback whales arrive in the Gulf of Maine after spending six months in the warm waters of the Caribbean, where they fast, mate, and nurse their calves. Their northward journey is described as the greatest migration undertaken by any mammal. Following routes established by their ancestors millions of years ago, they navigate as much as eight thousand miles by age-old, invisible signs.

The Gulf lies where the warm Gulf Stream meets chill Labrador currents. Their meeting stirs nutrients up from the ocean floor in a process known as upwelling. The whales’ arrival is therefore part of a larger seasonal pattern: a long migration leads them to waters where currents make food abundant.

The food web and the whales

In the Gulf’s grey-green waters, upwelling helps set a vast food chain in motion. Humpback whales feed on sand lances and herring, taking advantage of the seasonal glut to build their bodies back up. The abundance supports not only the whales but also an animated surface world of feeding fish and seabirds.

The book presents the Humpback whale as notably playful. Whalers gave it the name merry whale, recognizing a quality also expressed in its scientific name, Megaptera novæangliæ: big-winged New Englander. The animals’ exuberance is not separate from their physical power. A whale weighing fifty tons can launch itself from the water, its long flippers spread like wings and its tail barely touching the surface. Such leaps remain unexplained; the account notes that whales of many species breach in different ways and that no one knows exactly why.

A feeding aggregation

One afternoon, sixty or seventy whales gather within a circle three miles across. They are arranged in groups of five or six, with gulls squawking around each cluster. Some use kick-feeding, described as unique to Gulf of Maine whales: they flex and buck their tails at the surface, striking fish into submission. Others rise through columns of bubbles, their ascent marked by green clouds that burst at the surface before the whales break through with open mouths.

The scale unsettles ordinary human proportions. Sand lances leap from the whales’ mouths, while flukes surface in every direction. A local fisherman with forty years’ experience has never seen so many animals and cannot count or record them. The whales move independently, yet their feeding overlaps until no square metre of ocean seems unoccupied. The small observing craft is reduced to a stationary witness, waiting while the animals continue eating.

Human presence and perspective

The Gulf’s proximity to one of America’s great cities makes this abundance especially striking: the whales are less than two hours’ sail from a major urban centre. Yet the scene reverses the familiar assumption that the ocean is a setting arranged around human activity. The observers are encircled by the whales’ blows and must wait for the feeding to run its course; the animals claim the water through their presence, while people float at its margins.

That reversal gives the Gulf of Maine significance beyond its role as a productive habitat. It is a place where migration, currents, and seasonal prey sustain a spectacle that humans can witness but do not control. Recalled later, the whales’ breathing becomes both an unnerving reminder of human smallness and a source of consolation: the scene suggests a shared life, without promising that it will endure.