A Surprising Day

Friday, June 12 turned out to be a great day on the water, much to my surprise. The marine forecast on Wednesday made it look like the seas weren't going to be very fun. To be honest, we did have some folks that were feeling a little "under the weather," but by the end of the trip, we were coasting home on some following seas, under sunny blue skies, having had great looks at two humpbacks!

Thanks to the Cutler School from Swanzey, who came 2+ hours across the state to join us yesterday! As promised, here is some information on the two humpbacks we saw.

Humpback #1 was a whale named Literal, with an almost all-black tail (a Type 5 to us researchers!). Literal has two light lines on the right side of its tail, and the name Literal, according to a researcher who suggested it, is for those two marks, which look like quotation marks. In computer programming, apparently the word literal stand for those quotation marks, "which are used to denote a specific string value." As we told you when we visited Cutler School, sometimes we have to get very creative when naming whales!!

Humpback #2 is named Trough, and that one's a little more clear. Trough has a Type 1, or all-white fluke, and there's a "dip" in the edge of its fluke where it lost a bit of its tail some how. That cutout is in the shape of a trough.

Both of these whales are animals who were sighted for the first time only last year, and first sighted by Blue Ocean Society researchers in the Jeffreys Ledge area!