It would be hard to ask for a better day. We had fairly calm seas, blue skies, warm weather, and whales all around - less than 15 miles from the harbor!

Fin whale, showing the distinctive white lower jaw

We started off with some looks at 3 different fin whales, and then spent the majority of the trip watching one of our favorite humpbacks, "Flask," bubble feeding. Looking down into the greenish-blue seas, we could see thousands of fish swimming along, and they were in a concentration high enough to draw Flask and the other whales to the area.

Flask's easily recognizable tail, with the Erlenmeyer flask on the right edge of the fluke!

Bubble feeding makes whale watching easy, as we can always tell where a whale is going to come up. We watched intently for the bright green bubble clouds to appear, and when they did, it was only a matter of seconds before Flask would explode through them in a spectacular feeding lunge!

There were many birds around - it was funny to watch them fly to Flask after each lunge, with the shearwaters pitter-pattering across the water each time they took off to go grab Flask's leftovers.

It was an added bonus at one point to have Flask feeding off the left side of the boat, while a fin whale zoomed past our right side, and later started lunge-feeding, so we could see its giant flipper and half its tail in the air!

In total, we saw between 5-7 different fin whales, plus Flask the humpback, and had a quick glimpse of a minke in the area. Plenty of active whales around!

Good weather and whales always make for a happy day - we enjoyed spending it with our passengers and hope to see the rest of you out here soon!

Lot of whales on the Prince of Whales

What a day! The fog miraculously lifted and the afternoon trip was beautiful!

We ended up on southern Jeffreys Ledge with a number of whales around-mostly humpbacks but we did get a quick look at a minke!
The humpbacks seem to be all over so we found a few who were being cooperative- a trio swimming together! As of now, these whales were Polaris, the 25 year old male, Snowplow (11 years old) and possibly Aswan- all new visitors to the Ledge! These whales are typically found just to our south on Stellwagen Bank, preferring the sand eels that are plentiful there, but have been known to make occasional visits to the southern part of Jeffreys Ledge.

Aswan, Snowplow and Polaris


We also took some looks at a pair of humpbacks, but these whales didn't lift their tails for us so we are still unsure of their identity. Other whales were around but we ran out of time. Great to see new whales in the area!

Tons of Whales

Today turned out a lot better than I expected, given it was gray and drizzling when I woke up! We had a nice sunny day with decent visibility out on the Ledge, and there were lots of whales around. We started off searching around and finding a couple elusive minkes and a fin whale, then got a call that there were some humpbacks on southern Jeffreys.

We headed that way, and were eventually surrounded by blows, with humpbacks all around! Luckily, they were fairly spread out, as several other whale watch boats were there to join in on the fun. We spent most of our time with a smallish humpback whale who had an all-black (called a Type 5) tail, who took 7 minute dives, but fluked each time so we got to see its massive tail. I haven't ID'd this whale yet but will post it here if I do!

Our hopefully soon-to-be-identified humpback!

We then saw a few more whales before heading the 27 miles back to Rye - two whales together, one of which was Polaris, a male first sighted in 1984, and another pair and a single I wasn't able to get photos of.

Polaris

The whales weren't spending as much time at the surface as they have been on several occasions over the last couple weeks, but it was really cool to have so many whales around. I just wish we had had more time so that we would have been able to see all the whales in the area and discover who they were!

Same Day 2 Different Oceans

The whales continue to be present and active out on Jeffrey's Ledge. We watched lunging Fin whales and bubble feeding Humpback whales today. Fjord the Fin whale was charging through the water creating lots of white water this morning. Since Fjord was a bit inshore from the Ledge we continued on our way and ended up being surrounded by multiple species once we got to Jeffrey's. We found a pair of Fin whales, three different Minke whales and six Humpback whales!

The more time we spent in our location the more spouts from whales we began to notice. With tons of bait in the water we sat and watched whales surface in all directions all around the boat. We had individual bubble clouds and open mouth feeding from Solas, Hornbill, Tripod, Chromosome and Flask during our trip!

Perhaps the most exciting news was when we noticed one of our Humpback whales had a very "hooked" shaped dorsal fin which we quickly realized was a whale we did not immediately recognize as any of the whales we've been seeing in the past few days. So crew and passengers alike seemed to all gravitate to this perhaps new whale in the area. It only took one time for this whale to go on a deeper dive and lift it's tail out of the water enough for all of us to check out the underside of it's flukes before our Humpback Guru Gwalthney had a positive ID!!! It was Scylla!Scylla is a Humpback whale that was born in 1981 when she was first spotted with her mom, Istar, in the Gulf of Maine. This is the first time this season Scylla has been spotted by any of our Blue Ocean affiliates so all of us aboard the Granite State were pretty thrilled.

Despite a little unexpected increased wind forecast this afternoon we still were able to head back out on Jeffrey's and found Hornbill as well as four different Fin whales again! We even had a grand slam of shearwaters including multiple Corey's, Sooty, Greater and Manx shearwaters. We had some hardy passengers who toughed out the wind and water and spent the entire trip out on the pulpit.

Thanks to everyone who chanced the weather and made it possible for all of us to watch some amazing behaviors and find some great whales today!

Beautiful Wednesday on the Prince of Whales

What a gorgeous day today! Sunny skies, calm seas, and lots of whales! We first stopped on a couple of finback whales that weren't all that cooperative. One was an old friend, Dingle (#0369) but he was racing to the west and we still needed to go east, towards the Ledge. So we left Dingle and kept on cruising. We came upon a flurry of activity- multiple fin whales in the distance, minke whales scooting about, and a pair of humpbacks- Tripod and Chromosome. These two have been hanging out together for at least a week now which is a bit unusual as humpbacks are typically solitary, or normally only form bonds with other whales for the short term!

Anyway, T and C were bubble feeding and Chromosome was coming up really high out of the water! I don't think I could ever get tired of watching whales eat!


We also finally got a great close look at a finback whale just before we had to head for home. I'm not sure who this whale was but will consult our catalog tomorrow and attempt to find out.



Thanks to all of our wonderful repeat passengers today, as well as our new visitors from England, Germany and Italy! Hope to see you again soon!

Go Go Jeffrey's Ledge!

Wow! What a day aboard the Granite State. We started in the morning with flat, clam seas and bright sunshine. We found 5 Adult Humpback whales, including Tornado, Valley, Quote, Flask, and Satula! Yes, I said Satula. This humpback was seen last week, by the Prince of Whales, but I had yet to see him for myself, until today. We didn't see him last season and we were all worried that perhaps something had happened to him. Now that he is back, we are happy to know that he is safe and sound. It was great to see two of our adopt-a-whales out on the Ledge this morning. We also found Atlantic White Sided Dolphins and Minke whales throughout the trip. On our way home, we found Fin whales lunging after food along the surface of the water. It was a fantastic morning and we could not wait to get back out there in the afternoon.











The afternoon started with beautiful weather and lots of Fin whales. We found a total of about 12, including 2 different trios. One of my favorite moments of the afternoon was when two of the Fin whales surfaced, lunging through the water together. Seeing two 70-ft. animals cooperatively feed is quite a sight. Here is one of them on it's side with a pectoral fin above the surface. Fin whales being the only asymetrically colored mammals in the world, use the white coloration along their right side as a scare tactic to help corral fish.








It was a spectacular sight, as the second whale began to turn as well and both were taking in large amounts of herring. A Third Fin whale joined the pair a short time after to take in an afternoon snack as well. We decided to move on in seach of other whales...and boy, did we find them. As we travelled closer to the Ledge, Fin whales were surfacing everywhere. There were more whales then we could actually look at. A little later in the afternoon we found a single Humpback whale named Solas and then ended our trip with two other Humback whales, Tripod and Chromosome. Tripod and chromosome were helping each other bubble feed, surfacing together with mouths full of fish.






What a day on the Ledge. We are anxious to go back out tomorrow morning. I wonder who we will find??

Grand Slam on the Atlantic Queen!

Double Lunge!
(Humpbacks Chromosome and Tripod)

Just returned from my trip on the Atlantic Queen. What a fantastic day! I haven't been on the boat in awhile so I was thrilled to get out and see what everyone else has been experiencing recently! I am even happier to report that we experienced what we call here a grand slam - 4 species in one trip!

Fin Whale

We started out with a trio of fin whales traveling together through calm, blue seas - a great way to start the trip! We then moved on to see Quote, a 26-year old female humpback whale.

Quote

Then we saw some splashing in the distance, and moved on to find some Atlantic white-sided dolphins - and 2 "logging" humpbacks! In my 15 years of whale watching, I've never seen this sight - 2 humpback whales resting while about 10 dolphins milled around, almost like they were waiting to see what the humpbacks were going to do next. With the help of our Research Coordinator, Dianna Schulte, we've identified these whales as two females - Valley, a humpback first seen in 1985 and Tornado, who was born in 1988 and just had a calf last year.

Resting Humpbacks
Valley (left) and Tornado (right)

Next we moved on to a pair of humpbacks who've been seen a lot lately, Chromosome and Tripod, who were pretty mellow but then a couple times blew a huge bubble cloud under water and then came up through it simultaneously, both with mouths wide open! All I remember is looking up and seeing row upon row of baleen right in front of us. Pretty cool. We also saw 2 minkes during the trip, and there were several blows in the distance we never got to - so plenty of whales around!

Tripod

Chromosome

Lots of birds around, too - Wilson's storm petrels, greater and sooty shearwaters, and a random gannet or two!