Sunday's Atlantic Queen Trip

Great day today! Gray skies and a few raindrops, but the whales didn't seem to mind. Ended up seeing a humpback and 4 fin whales, and even a gray seal eating its lunch!

Started out with great looks at Siphon's 2009 calf (a whale not named yet). This whale wasn't spending a ton of time at the surface, but we did get a couple fluke shots and got to see the "glow" of its white flippers under the water.

We saw some birds concentrating around an area, and suddenly a fin whale lunged through. It only happened a couple times, but we got looks at its flipper. It's hard to tell in this picture, but their flippers are generally about 8 feet long!

We were fortunate to have the fin whales pop up right next to us several times. Even though I've been watching whales for years, I'm always amazed at their enormous size, and how graceful they are!

In the middle of all this, we saw another group of birds hovering near the surface - the Wilson's storm-petrels (small, dark brown birds with a white patch on their tail) looked almost like bats as they flitted above the water grabbing food! Suddenly, a furry head popped up in the middle of it all - a gray seal! Gray seals are larger than the more common (in our area) harbor seal, with a more horse-like head and widespread nostrils. It looks from the photos that this seal was feeding on a dog fish. Things got more exciting when a greater black-backed gull swooped in and tried to grab the fish - to no avail. The seal dove down with its prey and managed to elude the gull.

Lots of time with whales today, plus the added bonus of seeing another type of marine mammal. All in all a great day! Thanks to all who joined us!

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