The CORE Canyons Trip Begins

Day 1: Sunday, July 13 - Monday, July 14:

Gloucester, MA to Gilbert Canyon

Sunday, July 13 - Monday, July 14

The trip left at 10:00 PM aboard the Yankee Freedom, a 100-foot boat that is part of the large operation run by Yankee Fleet in Gloucester, Massachusetts. We loaded our supplies onto the boat, bid farewell to the fishing group heading out on a neighboring boat and slipped out of the harbor off under the light of a nearly full moon. After introductions of the twenty-some people on the trip, we took places in the canvas bunks below deck to get a good night's rest as the boat steamed out toward the edge of the continental shelf.

We awoke the next morning to a beautiful ocean sunrise and found ourselves in the midst of a large group of Basking Sharks as we continued toward Georges Bank. Brian Patteson's experienced eyes had already picked several Manx Shearwaters out of the ocean sunrise by the time I awoke at 5:00, and Butch Pearce and Mike Overton, also leaders up from North Carolina, had cracked open the first of their 13 gallons of fish oil and herring sperm to start the slick that would follow us for the next three days. The slick piled high with Wilson's Storm-Petrels as Greater Shearwaters soared back and forth all around, with a few Sooty Shearwaters mixed in to remind us that we hadn't yet reached the deeper water. Lisa Fox, the leader from CORE, was describing the group of Basking Sharks off the bow as the galley crew began to serve up some bagels and cereal. We were headed in the direction of Lydonia Canyon, some 100 miles off shore.

We came across our first group of Finback Whales and a few pods of Pilot Whales relatively early in the morning, while the sky was still gray and the seas had a color to match. A short while later, as if trying to match the color scheme, our first South Polar Skua barreled across from the stern, turning to pass directly over the bow to give us great views of its white wing patches and smooth, steely-gray chest and wings. As we passed into the warmer water past in mouth of Lydonia Canyon, we began to see our first Cory's Shearwaters and a few more Manx Shearwaters.

The nighthawk-whip flights of Leach's Storm Petrels also became more frequent as we felt the temperature change and passed into water that was obviously deeper. We were out "in the blue water," seeing the obvious color change associated with the lack of vegetative matter in the upper reaches of the warmer waters.

As another sign that we were in the deeper waters, we came across a pair of Sperm Whales, much awaited by many on board who had gone on this same trip for the past two years without finding any of these very cool, bulk-headed denizens of the deeper water. As we moved slowly through the deep canyon waters, keeping an eye out for unusual species, Brian and a crew members threw some hooks over the side to see what they could find. Forty-five minutes or so, success arrived in the form of a beautiful Yellowfin Tuna reeled in by Brian. For the rest of the day, we passed up Lydonia Canyon and into the adjacent Gilbert Canyon, running across a very rare Leatherback Turtle as well as Common, White-sided and Bottlenose Dolphins along the way. As we tied up to a lobster buoy in Gilbert Canyon for the night, we enjoyed some pasta and red sauce with meatballs along with pieces of the freshly-caught fish reeled in earlier that day.

Back to Canyons Introduction

Next: Day 2 -- The Diversity of the Canyons...