Good morning Barre Rotarians!

I hope everyone stayed warm this weekend and had a fun Super Bowl Sunday if that's something that you participate in. I'm looking forward to the warmer weather in the forecast for the next couple of weeks. 

At last weeks meeting we had a guest with us, Mike Gibson joined us to listen to my talk about our whale watch. Mike will also be joining us on March 4th as our guest speaker!

I don't have notes from last meeting so you'll have to forgive me if I get something wrong or miss a large announcement. I'm going completely off memory. 

Tony was fined a couple of times, I don't remember what for, but the important part is that they both passed. 😄

Eddie shared that he would be out of town this weekend and had some help from others covering last weekends hockey games. Thank you to those that were able to help! The hockey season is beginning to wind down but Eddie could use some extra help if you have the time. BOR volunteer sign up is HERE. 

Tony presented Doug with a Paul Harris pin, I believe it had 3 rubies on it. 

Caroline shared a bit about the Youth Speech Contest that will be held at our regular meeting this week. We're hoping to have some students participate, during this time they will give their speech and will be judged by Rotarians Caroline has recruited, the winner will go onto the next round. 

Once all club business was finished I pulled up my presentation on humpback whales in Juneau, AK. Last summer we took the girls to Juneau to visit their Grandma, who lives there, it was their first summer there that they have memory of, so we did ALL the things. One day we spent it on the water fishing for salmon and whale watching. 

I worked as a naturalist on whale watching boats out of Juneau while I was in college, so I gave an abbreviated version of what I would share with guests while on the tour. We talked about the size of humpback and what they do while they're in Juneau. The humpbacks in SE AK migrate between SE and Hawaii, while they're in AK they're focused on eating and putting on fat stores since when they head to HI they don't eat while they're there. They use HI as their breeding and calving grounds and don't eat at all while they're there. 

We touched on Stellar Sea Lions and their size, and also the brown bears on Admiralty Island. The Point Retreat Light House is on Admiralty Island, the island is home to the largest concentration of brown bears, averaging about 1 bear per sq mile. The island is about 1,600 sq miles so there are around 1,600 brown bears on the island. 

Curious Sea Lion

Point Retreat Light House on Admiralty Island

From there we moved onto the whales. We found a group of 5-8 or so whales that we watched for quite a while. The whales were making a circle of sorts, where they would surface breath several times swimming towards our boat then dive and come up behind us again. They did this several times, where we were able to get some really great looks at their size and flukes. A humpback whales fluke (tail) is like their finger print. Each one is unique and you can actually identify the whales if you get a good look at the underside of their tail. 

Humpback Fluke

We watched the whales feed for quite a while, my daughters, Lena & Riley got to experience "whale snot" because of the way the wind was blowing we would get a whiff of the whales breath essentially. Because they spend their time eating in AK their breath smells like fish. Lena & Riley thought that it stunk 😆

I shared several videos during the presentation highlighting how large the whales are and how close we got to them. 

Check out one of the videos HERE