Thursday on the Prince of Whales

Another lovely day on Jeffreys Ledge. The marine life was outstanding today with 3 species of whales and tons of birds of all kinds! We even saw a couple schools of bluefin tuna fish chasing smaller fish up to the surface! Fjord, the finback, (above) showed up on our afternoon trip briefly. The morning trip had fin whales all around! Check out the gorgeous chevron pattern on this whale:

And the spout of this one as the fin whale was making its own bow wake in front of it:

This afternoon, we also were lucky to witness some bubble feeding by Sword and Tornado. They were surfacing a few times with their mouths wide open, with the shearwaters attempting to swoop in for a few lone fish!

Sword and Tornado, with a shearwater in the background.

Sword

We saw another one of our friends, Flask, on both the morning and afternoon trips! Thanks to Jean for adopting him!

Flask with a sooty shearwater

Trident's long flipper and corner of her tail

As we were heading for home, we passed by Trident, who was flipper slapping and tail lobbing for a bit. A few years ago, Trident was entangled in gill net gear and was unable to use her flippers as they were pinned to her sides! Perhaps now she just wanted to show them off! She was certainly trying to communicate something. As she was slapping, we saw another whale breach way off in the distance! One can only speculate the conversations that take place under the water's surface!

As we tried to head for home again, we were side tracked by one last sighting...We ended our day with a new visitor to Jeffreys Ledge- Clipper, with her new calf!! Clipper is an old favorite, so to see her with another calf was such a treat! The calf was playful and surprised us a couple of times by coming up next to the boat! Seeing this lively fellow reminded me of the last time we saw Clipper- last summer when she was breaching while pregnant!

Clipper's "clipped" dorsal fin

Clipper and her calf going down for a dive

Thanks again to all of our supportive passengers!


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