My first whale watch did not go well.

At the time I was a student in meteorology at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine on Mount Desert Island. It was the Fourth of July — a holiday for students — and a day on which it seemed half the population of the Northeast had poured into Bar Harbor.

Along with several companions, I had decided that a great way to escape the worst of the crowding was to get tickets to a whale watch and find some quiet on the open ocean.

But there were a couple of potential issues.

One was that Bar Harbor was quite fogged in, making viewing the wildlife problematic, though we were assured that 26 miles off the coast — our destination — viewing was much better.

The other was that the night before there had been a birthday party for one of our classmates, which had involved line dancing and the alternate consumption of gin and tonics and beer. Not a good combination, but perhaps that was why, in the lateness of the hour, an early rise and a whale watch seemed like a good idea.

A breakfast of pancakes and scrambled eggs had been topped off with a couple of Dramamine tablets, and several of us piled into somebody’s van and drove to the harbor where we purchased tickets for an 8:30 a.m. departure on one of those large, diesel-powered whale-watch ships common to Northeast seaports. 

The blast on its horn signaling imminent departure startled us all, and the hot coffee overflow of the paper cup from which I had been drinking  spilled down the front of my shirt.  Not a good omen.

I remember that the moment the ship pulled slowly away from the dock, I had an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach — a very bad indicator of things to come when you are less than a hundred feet from shore into water that is glassy-smooth. Shortly, we were completely engulfed in fog and the shoreline had vanished into it.

Beneath our feet, we could feel the throbbing of the engines and the air became quite cool — but overwhelming all other sensations was the smell of burning diesel fuel.

As we pulled out into Frenchman Bay headed toward the open ocean my stomach was telling me that I had made a dreadful mistake going on this cruise and, from the looks on the faces of some fellow passengers, I was not alone in the feeling.

To my annoyance, my companions seemed fine but I spent the next 90 minutes circling the deck and trying to get a glimpse through the fog of the distant horizon — a technique recommended to abate the effects of sea-sickness.

In addition, we were now about 15 miles out into the open ocean where whale-watch boats were radioing each other that whales had been sighted and the temperature had dropped into the lower fifties. Coupled with the wind from the boat’s speed, this made it very cold indeed; like many aboard, I had only a hooded sweatshirt for warmth.

And now the ship had commenced a very slow left-to-right rocking and that rhythmic motion coupled with the smell of burning diesel oil sent me and numbers of other passengers into the ship’s cabin where the restrooms might just as well have had revolving doors. The fog had not lifted much even out here and visibility was only about a quarter of a mile.

The thought crossed my mind that Moby Dick could have breached a half-mile away and none of us would have seen him. The boat had now come to a halt and its slow left-to-right rocking had increased with predictable effects on many of the passengers — and me.

I could not remember precisely when I had felt so trapped and thoroughly miserable. I had the wild feeling of being aboard a spacecraft in some remote, featureless part of the solar system afflicted with the sickness that comes with the absence of gravity.

Suddenly, the ship’s loudspeakers crackled to life and a hoarse voice that suggested that Moby Dick had indeed exploded to the surface yelled: “Whales! Whales to port!” resulting in a mad rush even among those afflicted with mal de mer to the outside and to the left side of the boat. (“Port” with four letters means left; “starboard” means right.)

To make matters worse, I was momentarily stricken with the wild, panicky thought that all those bodies on the left side might cause the ship to capsize.

I’m not sure how long we all stood there in silence gaping at the gray, slowly undulating ocean surface — but after what seemed to have been a long time a young child in his very best “the emperor is not wearing any clothes” voice said loudly:“Where are the whales?”

After a moment, his question elicited some nervous laughter. Then suddenly, perhaps three-hundred feet away from the boat, we saw a pair of black shiny backs and tails break the shifting surface and vanish into the abyss. The sighting might have lasted two seconds.

But the near-hysterical voice from the crackling speakers called out, “Minke whales! Minke whales to port!”

Minkes are small as whales go — perhaps 30 feet in length — and their very brief appearance was disappointing to say the least.

They did not appear again and all the folks with their cell phones and cameras out got pictures of nothing more than the dull, featureless surface of the sea. But the whale watch company had promised whales and we had glimpsed two of them.

As it was now early afternoon and the ship had to get back to port to load passengers for the next excursion, the engines were cranked up and at a brisk pace we began the trek back to Bar Harbor. My disappointment in the two-second view of the Minkes was somewhat alleviated by the fact that, as the ship was now riding with the incoming tide, the symptoms of my sea-sickness subsided. I was happy to be heading for terra firma and vowed that this would be my one and only whale watch.

But then.

Two summers later, I was enrolled in a class at the college called “Coastal Geology,” unaware until the first day of class that the course was again going to involve a trip out into the open ocean — this time in a refitted lobster boat.

In a course on the glacial geology of Acadia National Park and Mount Desert Island the previous year, I had traveled aboard the boat in the shallow waters around the island and some of its bays and had been pleased that I had suffered no sea-sickness in spite of the boat’s bouncing as it cruised.

For some reason, the boat’s up-and-down motion did not affect me as the side-to-side motion of the whale-watch boat had. Still — I doubled up on Dramamine. In addition, a pharmacist had recommended to me the purchase of a pair of fabric arm bracelets that were supposedly highly effective in warding off sea-sickness.

In the company of six other students and our professor, we sped away from the village of Bar Harbor and headed out away from the coast. Our destination was Mount Desert Rock, a small island some 26 miles out in the ocean on which there was a whale-research station.

Humpbacks and finbacks had been reported near it in recent days and the weather that day was perfect:  unlimited visibility with a deep blue, cloudless sky and very low winds.

Within an hour, our sharp-eyed professor had spotted spouting less than a mile off the port side of our boat and the pilot reduced our speed and set a course that would take us in the direction of the spout.   Growing to lengths greater than 50 feet, humpbacks are known to be playful and often seem to seek out boats that are observing them and then perform for them.

Suddenly, we observed two spouts close together and were told that this was likely a female whale with a calf. The pilot cut the engine so as not to startle the whales and for a few moments the boat rocked gently in the sea and everyone remained quiet.

Suddenly again, only a hundred or so feet off the starboard side of our boat, a humpback whale surfaced and spouted. We were downwind of the massive creature and it took only a moment for the fumes to drift over us.

The odor was foul beyond belief: Imagine opening a tin of anchovies to find the content rotten, the stench spreading rapidly in every direction.

Everyone reacted in the same way, pretending to gag but simultaneously laughing at the seeming absurdity of the situation that for the moment destroyed any romantic notions we had about whales.

But once the foul cloud had passed, we were delighted to see that the humpback was seemingly determined to put on a show for us, one involving her calf who broke the surface and also spouted — mercifully downwind of our boat.

While the mother slowly circled our boat doing shallow dives, her broad flukes making huge splashes in the foamy surface, her calf came within a dozen feet of the starboard side of the boat, rolling onto its back and waving its fins like a kid eager to show off some newly-learned swimming skill.

Then it dove and disappeared only to surface on the port side, having passed directly beneath us. It spouted again, sounding for all the world like a child sneezing loudly. And it would eagerly exhibit its fins and dive again and turn up before or aft of the boat; all the while, its mother drifted lazily a couple of hundred feet away patiently watching her youngster’s antics.

The show went on for the better part of 15 minutes, long enough for everyone to take photos or record videos — and suddenly the two were gone. Like a mother escorting her rambunctious child from a playground, the female humpback seemed to have decided that playtime was over.

Several thousand feet away, we spotted two spouts followed by an exhibit of flukes and the two vanished into the great green of the sea.

The pilot fired up the engine and in a short time Mount Desert Rock came into view.

Too small and distant to be seen from the Maine coast, “The Rock” as it is known is a low, rubble-covered island of only a few acres with a couple of fragile-looking buildings and a radio tower. It certainly did not look like a place you would want to be during one of the fierce North Atlantic storms that occasionally rage through the area.

But the waters around The Rock are very deep and are known to be good feeding grounds for whales, and research on the huge mammals has been conducted there for many years.

While we were still some distance away from the island, we spotted twin spouts beneath two huge humps that broke the surface, but there were no flukes as the animals dove, effortlessly breaking the surface, an indication that these were not humpback whales.

Our professor interpreted their behavior as that of finbacks, which were known to frequent the area and can grow to a length of over sixty feet.  The pilot killed the engine and for a few minutes we quietly drifted, the only sound coming from gulls and other sea birds circling the area where the whales had partially surfaced, alerted to the possibility of scooping up any prey that the whales had missed.

All at once, just a few dozen feet off starboard, there was a disturbance in the water — and then another — as two massive bodies with diminutive dorsal fins soundlessly broke the surface and sank again into the depths, their wakes sucking water with them.

Though finbacks are not known to be aggressive, they exhibited none of the playfulness of the humpbacks. Instead, we were left with the impression of two huge creatures slowly passing by, and we could only wonder whether they saw us as objects of curiosity or a threat.

Next to them, our lobster boat seemed awfully puny. For several long moments, they were invisible but unnerving was the fact that these two huge creatures were somewhere nearby, perhaps even under our boat, the calm ocean surface giving no indication of their whereabouts.

Above us, the gulls broke the silence with their excited squawks and a few of them dove to the water, scooping up prey.

Then a few hundred feet away the finbacks surfaced again, swimming away from us side by side only a dozen or so yards apart and they spouted. The spray went higher than that of the humpbacks and drifted away from us; the sound was a deep, muffled, rather intimidating boom.

With binoculars, we searched the horizon but the whales were gone, vanished into the depths. Someone said something woefully inadequate such as, “Looks like the show is over.” 

The pilot prepared to fire up the engine and return to Bar Harbor when suddenly about a mile away, a whale breached. From the size of its fins we could see clearly that it was a humpback and it hurled itself perhaps 20 feet above the waves and then crashed back into the sea in an explosion of salt water.

It was too far away for the crash to be heard and the breach had happened so suddenly and was over so quickly that no one had been able to photograph it but our own surprised cries must have carried a long distance over the water.

The reason why whales breach is unknown. They may be trying to remove parasites or are searching for predators; perhaps, it has been speculated, they do it for fun.

In any case, the sight of one of these marine giants hurling itself above the surface and crashing back into the sea in a massive spray of bubbles and foam is one of the great spectacles of nature.

The trip back to Bar Harbor was uneventful except for the appearance of a half-dozen harbor porpoises that briefly paced us. When we sighted the lighthouse on Egg Rock that guards the entrance to Frenchman Bay, we were delighted to see that Bar Harbor and its surrounding mountains stood out in sharp relief, though some dark clouds in the west warned that change was coming.

But we had eluded the bad weather, and we were grateful that none of us had experienced any seasickness — aside, perhaps, from the slightly queasy feeling we had experienced in the presence of the finbacks.

That night, a group of us went into town for a lobster dinner. Midway through the meal, it began to rain — not a soaker but steady and cold — and, when we left the restaurant, we regretted that we had chosen to walk into town from the college. 

Though everyone was wearing rain slicks and carrying umbrellas, it was obviously going to be a wet, dark slog back to the campus. Our route took us past Agamont Park, which fronts on the water and by day gives an expansive view of the ocean.

In the misty rain, we could not see very far into the ocean but we could hear waves breaking on the shingle beach as the wind had come up with the rain and was stirring the surface. It was eerie to think that far out from the coast the great beasts we had seen that day were plying the waters even in the night, their lives and adventures among the mysteries that haunt those of us who dwell on the land.