NECWA News Blog

(Dominica and Tammy collecting data aboard Captain John Boats) As we come class to the end of our whale watch season, we want to thank all our NECWA interns for a job well done. Many have already headed off to college and we miss them dearly. But we still have a few at home including Nick and Bob as well as Dominica and Tammy (see photo above). Our NECWA interns have worked hard all summer recording and analyzing data collected during whale watching trips aboard vessels owned and operated by Captain John Whale Watching and Fishing Tours. There is more work to do even as the whale watching season comes to an end, and we will be working with our interns to make sure that all their data gets analyzed and shared with other research groups in the New England area. Captain John Boats operates out of Plymouth Harbor and offers an variety of public and chartered trips including whale watching, fishing trips and specialty cruises such as their Cape Cod Canal and Lobster Dinner Cruise. (Photo co...

Lots of wonderful photos of the festival. Keep scrolling down to read about this fabulous event! Rappin for Raptors Festival at the Boston Nature Center - Krill Today, Captain John Boats was one of the exhibitors at the Rappin for Raptors festival held at the Boston Nature Center in Mattapan, MA. This annual festival is sponsored by the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Even though the festival name highlights raptors, there were lots of other topics and activities focusing on other local animals, including reptiles, insects, whales and sharks. And there was a fabulous steel band by local kids in the area. They sounded fabulous! Krill set up an educational display along with free educational literature and a number of hands-on activities. With the help of Mary Nash and Shaya French , both volunteers from the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance, Captain John's tables was one of the busies in the festival. There were lots of neat whale and shark artifacts on display for kids and adult...

On September 15th, IFAW's Marine Mammal Rescue team received a call from Tom about a dead ocean sunfish that washed ashore on a beach in North Truro. Tom works for Kalmar Village, a beautiful and quaint group of cottages that sit right along the beach area in North Truro. Tom found this ocean sunfish carcass when he was walking along the water's edge. Krill and Dominica headed down to examine this carcass the next day, but were not able to connect with Tom. So they returned on the 18th and worked with Tom, his wife Casey and their assistant Andy. Tom had pulled the sunfish up above the high tide line to make sure that it didn't wash away before Krill and Dominica could examine it. This was wonderful in the sense that the carcass was not going to refloat itself on the next high tide. But it also meant that the carcass had been festering under a blue tarp for a few days. If you have ever been around an ocean sunfish carcass, you can attest to the fact that they stink more tha...