Blue Ocean Society's Whale Sightings

Greetings! Thanks for visiting our blog. Our staff and interns will be posting their experiences here working on whale watch boats in NH and MA.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Tuesday on the Prince of Whales

Beautiful weather and whales today! We began our adventure by finding Mudskipper, a humpback whale who is infamous for not lifting his tail. To my surprise, today he lifted his tail several times! I guess he didn't like the stereotype we had given him! He was also logging- his version of resting!

Mudskipper's blow

Dorsal fin of an unidentified humpback whale

We left Mudskipper and saw a couple more humpbacks, but neither were showing their flukes very well so we still have a little more work to do to figure out who those two were.

The major highlight for me for this trip was the finback whale who was moving slowly just below the surface. This still unknown whale was relaxed and possible sleeping too! With the excellent lighting and surface conditions, we were able to look right into the water (especially if you had polarized sunglasses) and see the entire whale below the surface. The white lower jaw was glowing as we watched the fluke move up and down, just barely touching the surface! We accompanied this whale for several minutes before it decided to wake up and pick up speed. We kept up for a little bit- going about 15 mph- before it went down for a deep dive.

Finback whale just below the surface

Finback whale blow

Finback whale dorsal fin

After leaving this cool whale, we came into an area with several whales- a single traveling humpback, a pair of humbacks and another finback whale! We were running out of time but managed to get a couple looks at the pair. One of these was Sword- a male humpback whale. The other is still yet to be identified.

Sword, the humpback whale

Thanks to all of our enthusiastic passengers who had extremely thoughtful and intersting questions today!


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