Near noontime one of the survey planes radioed in to us with a sighting of an adult right whale who had never been biopsied in its 21 years of life, so we steered northeast toward where the whale was seen by the plane. About an hour and a half later we were pulling up to the spot of the sighting, about 20 miles off Brunswick, Georgia, and we slowed to survey the area to try to relocate the whale. I was in the lookout tower at this point, and I scanned the horizon for whitewater or a spout, tell-tale signs that we'd found our target whale. For miles and miles in every direction there was nothing but deep green water and pale blue sky.
Photo Credit: Kelly Slivka.
Suddenly I felt the biopsy boat shudder to a crawl and I peered ahead of us. Something strange was floating in the water 50 feet from the bow. It was brownish in color and roughly textured, and I initially though it to be the trunk of a palm tree. One of us shouted that maybe it was an old tire, and as we got closer, Clay, who was steering the boat, offhandedly commented that it looked like a dead alligator.
Well, he was more right than any of us would have ever imagined. As we pulled up alongside the mysterious object its nature became clear to us, and we suffered initially from absolute disbelief: here, in wide open waters where we expected to see whales, swam a large, very-much-alive alligator! It's hard to say if it just didn't read its map right or if it was exploring new horizons, but it was certainly one of the more bizarre things I've ever seen out in the ocean.
View Alligator Sighting in a larger map
Map displays the approximate location of our sighting of the sea-worthy alligator, 20 miles off shore from Brunswick, GA.
-Kelly
(Check out this previous blog of a great white shark sighting!)
