Raccoon, the humpback whale!Leaving Newburyport yesterday afternoon, I wasn't sure what the day would bring. The clouds were looming and the northeast wind was picking up. The other whale watch boats had cancelled but we pressed on with our hardy group of passengers.
Our first stop was on a minke whale that appeared briefly, and then disappeared. Two other minkes were spotted on our way to the Ledge. The ride took a little longer than usual as we went a little further than we had been going but the whales had moved, as they always do! We came into an area filled with activity- blows everywhere and lots of birds.
We came upon a humpback, who looked very familiar but I knew wasn't any of the whales we had seen in recent years. I checked our onboard catalog and learned this was Raccoon, a male who was first documented 24 years ago! I haven't seen Raccoon on Jeffreys Ledge since my first year of whale watching, way back in 1995!
Raccoon, with a shearwater flying by.We then found an interesting finback whale who was acting a bit lazy at the surface- just swimming slowly and circling around. For a bit we couldn't tell if there was one whale or two, since this character would lift the tip of its fluke out of the water when the dorsal fin was up too, so it looked like there were two fins! I'm pretty sure we've seen this whale before, or at least a whale with the same interesting behavior. I'm guessing this whale has some sort of fluke deformity causing the up-turned tip, but it certainly does not appear to effect the whale!
Finback whale with the right tip of the fluke showing!On our way back in, we passed by Raccoon one more time, and then tried to look at a couple of low-profile finbacks. All in all, we had a great trip, found lots of whales and the weather held off!
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