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.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

August 18 Atlantic Queen


Kind of a grey day out at Jeffreys Ledge. We started to make our way past the Isles of Shoals when we came upon our first minke whale of the trip. Overall we saw 9 different minke whales!!! Certainly have been seeing a lot of minke whales lately. Then we saw some more fins in the distance. This time it wasn't minke whales, but a pod of about 50+ atlantic white sided dolphins.


It is always so fun to spend time with these dolphins. They can really get playful, jumping, and flipping around the boat. It's hard to get photos of these little guys, but hopefully our passengers were able to get some good ones. In the picture above you can really see that white side for which they get their name. Out in the distance we saw a spout and decided to investigate. It belonged to a fin whale; the second largest animal on the planet. Based on the dorsal fin shape we determined this was 9618. According to our records the last time this whale was seen was in 2006. Always nice to have an old friend back.
There were a few more fin whale blows in the distance, but these fin whales were moving in and out of the area quickly. Too fast for us to get close enough. We ended the trip with one humpback whales. It was Crystal again. The first picture below is the tail shot we got today. But it was really grey out there, and I promised some passengers that I would add another photo from a clearer day. Still the same whale.

Thank you to everyone who joined us today! We hope to see you soon.

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