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.

Friday, July 31, 2009

Behaviors of all Kinds

Thursday aboard the Granite State provided our passengers with looks at some whale behaviors not always seen. During our morning trip we found 3 Humpback whales logging. These whale were actually resting resembling large logs at the surface. Two of these whales were identified as Valley and Quote. The third animal has yet to be identified.

While spending some time with these animals we all got a major surprise when two adult Fin whales surfaced next to the boat! Just about everyone on the port side, including myself, was shocked by just how close these animals were as they surfaced from the depths of the ocean. We really got to witness just how large Fin whales are when you get the chance to see these creatures so close.

On our journey back towards Rye Harbor one of our crew members spotted another animal nearby so we went to take a closer look. Turned out to be a Humpback whale named Upsilon, first sighted in 1980, doing some bubble clouds and open mouth feeding. It was a great way to end an already fantastic morning out in the Gulf of Maine.

Our afternoon trip provided us with some completely different whales and behaviors! On our way out to the Ledge we found two Fin whale, one being Fjord(!), lunge feeding. Both animals would surface for a couple breaths and then roll upside down exposing their bellies and pleats for our passengers to see! We even got a couple glimpses of a Fin whale's tail as these animals exhibited these rarely seen behaviors. After getting some incredible looks at these Fin whales we made our way towards Jeffrey's Ledge but stopped short because we became surrounded by at least 7 Humpback whales close by!!

We found Upsilon again but this time this whale was flipper slapping over and over and over again! Looking at a giant white flipper almost 15ft in length and weighing up to 2,000lbs was quite the spectacle.
We were also treated to more bubble clouds and open mouth feeding by multiple whales in the area. A few of them were even consecutively coming up together with mouths wide open! We also saw one Humpback whale exhibiting another feeding behavior known as kick feeding. This animal was using it's large tail to scare/stun a group of fish into a very tight ball so it could then swim underneath the school of fish with it's mouth wide open and scoop up all the food.

With so much activity happening all around the boat it was even more surprising when we had two more adult Fin whales travelling through the area surface and pass by the front of the boat. Everywhere you looked we had animals surfacing providing our passengers with some incredible looks at different cetaceans.
I am still working on identifying all of the Humpback whales we saw but we did see Glostick, Scylla, and Tigris.

Great whales, great behaviors and great weather!



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