July 6 Granite State

What a beautiful day to be out on the ocean today! Not only was the ocean extremely calm but we saw quite the variety of life out on Jeffreys Ledge during our trips today. This morning we once again started with a handful of Minke whales. 

One of the kamikaze Minke whales circling all around us today!

We spent some time watching them, with a total of 8 Minke whales being seen throughout the whole trip, before moving on to Dingle the Fin whale.

Dingle continues to spend more time on Jeffreys Ledge

Dingle

At one point Dingle surprised us all as it surfaced just off the pulpit. Nothing like a sound of a Fin whale spout and a massive body rise out of the depths of the ocean right in front of us!

We had heard through radio reports that another species was on the move to the south of us and thank to our other whale watching friends out on the water we were able to relocate some Atlantic white-sided dolphins. We have not seen dolphins for over 2 weeks and so we were thrilled to learn a group was relatively close by. Granted this pod was heading south but we were able to see them before they continued moving away from the area. In route to the dolphins however, we took a quick look at a harbor seal as we saw this seal hauled out on a large log. The seal was logging on a log! 

A very nice balancing act from this harbor seal!

We didn't want to scare the seal off of its sunny spot so we pressed on towards the dolphins. This group of about 100 dolphins were all spread out and sometimes jumping out of the water so we all were able to enjoy spending time with these agile mammals.

Atlantic white-sided dolphins above and below

This afternoon we headed back to the area where Dingle and the Minke whales had been in the morning since we knew there was almost no chance of the dolphins still being around. Before getting to the ledge we found a few Minke whales that were being a bit tricky to watch. They were being very sporadic in their surfacings and so after attempting multiple times to get some looks we decided to cut our losses and perhaps find a few more cooperative whales. We ended up getting some nice looks at a few other Minke whales further offshore that seemed to be spending a bit more time at the surface allowing for everyone to get some nice looks at some of the 9 Minke whales seen in total this afternoon. Thanks to our Blue Ocean Society intern, Ceci, we also got a chance to see an Ocean sunfish today. She spotted this fish while answering questions from some of our passengers; we love multi-taskers with a great eye for marine life (thanks Ceci)!

Incoming Ocean sunfish!

Before heading for home we once again thank the Miss Cape Ann for spotting and letting us know of one more species in the area. Dingle was still around. This whale was being a bit more elusive this afternoon as no one seemed to know where this animal had ventured off too. Low and behold it had just moved a little (whales like to do that more than you think!) and with a bit more time to spend out on the ledge we were lucky enough to get a chance to spend some time with this whale once again today.

Dingle off on a deeper dive

Thanks to all our passengers who were great whale spotters today. We will be back out enjoying the cooler temperatures offshore again tomorrow so feel free to join us if you want a good place to stay cool. Jeffreys Ledge is usually a good bet!

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