June 17 Granite State

The weather and the whales certainly did a great job shaking things up today. This morning we had beautiful conditions to go searching. We decided to take advantage of the great weather and head to areas of Jeffreys Ledge that provided us with whale sightings earlier this week, areas that haven't been explored by many boats recently. By going to areas less boats have been to the outcome can go either way. Sometimes we end up finding whales that no one else has seen and now know where other animals are spending time on Jeffreys Ledge. Sometimes these excursions do not turn out as well as we always hope. Today luck was not on our side. We searched, and searched, and searched some more. We did a round-trip voyage of 71 miles this morning and the whales wanted nothing to do with us! A total of 5 Minke whales were seen but each and every time we made our way into the area where we had seen these whales, they disappeared. The whales had no desire to get their picture taken by anyone this morning. We were on a wild goose chase literally! Well more like a wild whale chase but when you think about it that's what we do everything single day. So we did see some whales but boy were they being sneaky this morning!

This afternoon the sun was out but quickly disappeared. The wind would pick up for a bit, die off, and repeat as we decided to head to different regions of Jeffreys Ledge than from where we were this morning. Low and behold the first thing we saw were some splashes out in the distance. Dolphins were around! As we made our way towards the dolphins suddenly a blow appeared. There were dolphins and a whale ahead of us.  We ended up getting a few looks at a Fin whale as well as 8-10 Atlantic white-sided dolphins. The Fin whale was on the move and the dolphins were darting around everywhere but we managed some looks at both species before venturing further offshore.

We then got a chance to check out a Minke whale. This whale was also on the move, but moving in circles allowing for some great looks as it swam past the boat. 

Minke whale

Before we ran out of time another species was nearby. Satula the Humpback whale had returned to Jeffreys Ledge. We last saw this whale on May 19 this year. 

Satula

Satula was definitely doing some feeding for we even saw a few bubble clouds form as this whale circled around. What a completely different change from the morning. Luckily also we managed to sneak around the storms that popped up as the day went on and only dealt with some crazy wind shifts/gusts on our way home today!

Satula with its lack of dorsal fin surfaces while some storm clouds pass by us to the north

Thanks to all our passengers today who searched and spotted and searched some more as our travels took us to all different corners of Jeffreys Ledge today!

Ominous clouds out towards the east

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