Since then, I've hit as many of the U.S. whale-watching meccas as possible, from Montauk to Maui. But several years ago, in a boat off Gloucester, Massachusetts, I began feeling uneasy about the practice. Minutes after spotting a humpback, our boat was surrounded by a half-dozen others jostling for position. Wildness is what draws whale-watchers to Mull. A place like Maui has had decades to discover where its humpbacks are and when they will be there, but whale-spotting off Mull is too new, and minkes too unknown, to provide such expectations.
Humpbacks are very docile.
A minke is not like that. It will only come to you when it chooses to. The first step is to determine their number. After four years, Fairbairns's group has identified 28 whales, and has discovered that 15 of them make the Inner Hebrides their seasonal home. But their whereabouts in winter remain a mystery, since lack of funding makes year-round research impossible.